Thank you for coming to the spot. I'd first like to mention that this is co-organized with Amnesty International. And I've been instructed to keep as much time as possible for questions and answers, so I'll try to run through what I want to say within 15 or 20 minutes, so that we can talk.

And I apologize ahead of time if my voice gives up on me in the middle. But the subject of this talk is going to be on highlighting the very unique case of a country which is both highly globalized and very technologically advanced,

but also very repressive and very harsh when it comes to freedom of expression and the existence of public sphere. And we want to highlight the particular case of Ahmad Mansour, who is an Emirati activist and human rights defender,

who we're hoping to create as much noise as possible to push for his release. He's in jail right now. So maybe I can start by asking you, how many of you have been to Dubai? Raise of hands, show of hands.

Okay, it's good to see that. How many have you been out of the airport in Dubai? Okay, excellent. I grew up in the United Arab Emirates. I lived in the United Arab Emirates all my life, 36 and a half years, until three years ago, when I was summarily expelled. I was put in jail, and then I was exiled from the country without trial.

This might seem harsh, but this is actually my being not a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, but a lifelong resident. This is actually probably the least harsh thing that could happen.

If I was a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, I would have come to a much more severe punishment. And this is why we want to talk about the case of Ahmad Mansour. When I walked into the event, to Republica, the vibe, the kind of people that I see,

the kind of stores, the kind of branding, it could have been in Dubai, to be honest. This could have been in Dubai. With the exception, maybe with the difference, is that in the United Arab Emirates, you don't have an open public sphere, you don't have freedom of expression, you don't have democracy, and you have this paradox of having a country

which is very highly connected and very technologically advanced, excellent internet speeds, excellent internet connectivity, the highest mobile smartphone penetration in the world, probably the highest internet penetration in the Arab world, and yet no freedom of expression. And yet everyone with an opinion either has to keep that opinion to himself,

or he's going to get in trouble. Maybe I can start by highlighting a story that kind of happened two years ago. This is 2015, and I'm in Oslo, and this is after my exile. I get a call from a journalist who works for an international newspaper,

and she is writing a piece about freedom of expression in the United Arab Emirates. And the piece calls for talking with people in the United Arab Emirates about freedom of expression. And I'm surprised because she called me, and she knows that I'm exiled, she knows that I'm not in the United Arab Emirates,

and it's a very powerful moment when she explained to me why. She said nobody could talk to her. How poignant is it that she's trying to write a piece about freedom of expression in the United Arab Emirates, and nobody in the United Arab Emirates dares speak to her about it.

There was nobody within the country who was willing to talk about freedom of expression in the country in a piece about freedom of expression in the country. But there was only one person, one guy, that dared speak out. The only person who would talk to her, and that is Ahmad Mansour.

Ahmad Mansour is currently in jail, and I'd like to dedicate the next few minutes to highlighting who he is and why he deserves our help. But I think I'll have to start, maybe start with a little bit about my background for people who don't know me. I'm an Arab Spring activist. I became prominent on Twitter, on social media, in 2011.

I lived in the United Arab Emirates, which made me a little bit separated from the heartlands of the Arab Spring revolutions. And this is why my Arab Spring experience was online rather than on the streets. And maybe I can link this to the story of Ahmad Mansour, because when the Arab Spring started in 2011, there are 22 Arab countries,

and out of 22 Arab countries, 20 of the 22 had street protests, had some form of street protests or street activism. Out of 22 countries, only the United Arab Emirates and Qatar did not see any street protests or any street activism. But that does not mean that the United Arab Emirates was not affected.

It was not touched. In April 2011, and April is quite early in the Arab Spring, April was, you can say, one month after the Syrian revolution, so we already had the Egyptian revolution come to a conclusion,

to a successful conclusion. We had the Tunisian revolution come to a successful conclusion. And we had the Yemeni and Bahraini and, what do you say, and the Libyan revolution was still going on, and the Syrian revolution was still going on. At this point, in April, five UAE nationals who are academics, activists,

human rights defenders, they wrote an open letter to the leadership of the country. And this open letter was highly, it was very respectful, it was very well worded, very well selected demands, and it was basically just a letter of recommendation saying to the leadership of the country,

it's about time we see some kind of reform. The United Arab Emirates has matured, that's what they said, the United Arab Emirates has matured, and it's about time that the UAE citizen has a say in his own future and in the decisions that are being made on his behalf.

How do you think the United Arab Emirates government reacted? These are five academics, some of the best academics in the country, academics and activists and human rights defenders. They were accused of insulting the presidency.

Whenever you give any kind of criticism or feedback, feedback is criticism, criticism is treason, treason sends you to jail. This is the formula. Out of the five activists, one of them was Ahmad Mansour. And Ahmad Mansour was arrested in April, and later in November,

November in the same year, November 2011, maybe also to demonstrate a little bit about how the United Arab Emirates deals with this kind of thing, they convicted the five men on charges of insulting the presidency, and then the next day they pardoned them.

So this is their way of, you know, have your cake and eat it. So you're kind of asserting your right to actually convict them, but at the same time you don't want the PR, you don't want the PR, the public relations backlash, so you let them go. 2012 and 2013 were, again, we saw a lot of repression of the opposition,

of the dissidents. And what really set aside Ahmad Mansour, apart from everyone else, I think was his independence. Ahmad Mansour was not part of any group.

He was never part of any group. He is on the board of several NGOs, but he did not have any affiliations with any Islamic parties. He did not have any affiliations with any political parties. He was always an independent human rights defender, one of the, you know, he's an activist of the highest caliber, with a lot of energy, with a lot of heart,

and he, maybe the fact that he was independent helped him evade, you know, the kind of harsh treatment that befell others. So, the United Arab Emirates cares about this image.

It cares about public relations. But it has invested millions, if not billions, into crafting this image of a modern country, a success story, an oasis of stability and security within a sea of chaos. It profits from this, of course, not only financially, but politically as well.

And you have this situation where it uses its image, this image of a technologically advanced country, of kind of a desert miracle. It uses this for two reasons. First, to repress, to keep people down, to say that, you know, your, you know,

your criticisms are invalid because we're doing fine, we're doing well, we're doing great. Your criticisms are completely invalid. But also, and this is really important here, and maybe we can talk about this more in the questions and answers, it does this in order to distract from its own unsustainability.

The United Arab Emirates, just like many of the Gulf states, are deeply unsustainable. They're not sustainable politically or economically or demographically, and, you know, you're not allowed to even broach the topic, you're not allowed to even raise the topic, raising the topic as treason and again that ends you in jail. But, you know, this very slick image helps them to distract from this.

So Ahmad Mansour in 2015 was awarded what we call the Nobel Peace Prize for Human Rights Defenders, which is an award called the Martin Ennals Award. It's a highly prestigious award for human rights defenders. He was awarded this in 2015.

As you can imagine, the United Arab Emirates government was not happy about it. In 2016, there was a particular incident that took place that actually shows the level to which the United Arab Emirates government is willing to go to harass Ahmad Mansour. Ahmad Mansour was highly connected with other activists.

He was, as I mentioned, one of the only voices that remained independent in the country. And in 2016, it was found out that the United Arab Emirates had an elite piece of software created by an Israeli company in order to be downloaded to target Ahmad Mansour's iPhone.

It was basically created specifically to hack his phone. And the purpose of this was to turn his phone into a tracking device, as in not only to download the information, but to continue to be housed on the phone and to send updates about everything that he's doing

and everyone that he's contacting. Luckily, this was not successful, and it was found out in time. So, you know, the hack itself was not completely successful. Maybe there were hacks before that we never found out about. But what's interesting over here is that the government spent this amount of money just to track one activist.

And this is when we started calling him the Million Dollar Dissident, because that's what we estimate that they've spent in order to track Ahmad Mansour. In fact, Apple released a security patch after that hack attempt

to basically plug that security hole. Around 2017, beginning of this year, maybe after Trump's election, we felt a change of energy in the region. You see, whether we like it or not, America is still an important country.

And when the guy in the White House does not care about human rights, there are repercussions. Dictators really take notes, and they immediately start moving. And in March 20, around six weeks ago, 12 security officers broke into Ahmad Mansour's house

in the Emirate of Ashman, in the United Arab Emirates. They kept his family outside. They searched the entire area, took out every electronic equipment, had it checked, had it confiscated, and then they had Ahmad Mansour himself taken away to an undisclosed location. It was two weeks before he was contacted,

before his family even knew where he was. There was a very brief supervised visit where his family could meet him. And now he stands accused of, let me read the charges, the very ridiculous charges that were brought against him. He was arrested for using his social media accounts

to publish false information that damages the country's reputation. So highlighting any human rights violations is damaging the country's reputation. Somehow it's easier to kidnap the people who are actually highlighting those human rights violations than to stop the violations altogether.

So in order to safeguard his reputation, instead of improving his human rights record, it's much easier to just get everyone to shut up. He was also accused of spreading hatred and sectarianism, which is completely, if I may say, bullshit. If you know Ahmad Mansour, you know him to be a very polite man, a very sweet man, and a man who never descends to that level.

And his Twitter profile is pretty much open for everyone to see. So why should you care? I mean, this is a tech conference, right?

Well, all day we're hearing about how technology is improving our lives and how technology is actually liberating us. And maybe this is an example of how technology can get people in trouble and how technology can help dictators. And there are two things that I want to highlight before we open the floor.

The first is that the United Arab Emirates uses security, uses security software and technology to scare people, to scare the population by basically creating this image of being everywhere. So sometimes they leak this kind of information in order for people to actually feel their eyes and ears everywhere.

They also harass, they censor, and of course they hack. And they do this by, you know, they do this by hiring programmers who might be in Israel or in Italy or in Spain or wherever. The first thing that I would like to talk to you about is that

we need a kind of code of ethics for the programming profession that says that any programmer or any programming company, any IT company that colludes with dictators for this kind of purpose should have a reputation that matches its actions.

A programmer who does something like this should become unemployable across the world. Of course this is easier said than done because, you know, the United Arab Emirates and these governments, they have very deep pockets and they can create a situation where you never have to work again. But perhaps the second point here is that this is a government

that runs away to technology. Technology is always a crutch that says, you know, whenever we don't have to talk about our problems, let's make this more efficient, let's make this more efficient. Let's make this, you know, a smart app for this or let's make a website for this or let's make a user initiative for this. And they craft this image very well.

And they don't face any repercussions. They're still the darling of the world. Everyone invests there and they invest everywhere. Everyone goes there for tourism. Everyone spends their money over there. It's time for human rights violators, wherever they are, to have a reputation that matches their human rights record.

Thank you so much. And before I end, I think we have a petition for Ahmed Mansour. Can we have it on the screen?

So we have this petition for Ahmed Mansour that I invite you to go to the website.

It's freeahmad.org, if you can see it up there. Just freeahmad.org. I invite you to go to the website and sign the petition.

And, you know, we need to make as much noise as possible because they care about their PR, they care about their image and we have to make this hurt. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Hello, hello. Thank you very much for this insight. Are there any comments, statements, questions from the audience? Thank you very much. Thank you very much for being here and putting forward this very important issue and also the code of ethics.

Often when you talk to populations in countries that are dictatorships, they will say, but we're only 25 years old, our country. We are not ready enough to have democracy. I feel that this is a lie. But how do we counter this lie effectively?

Well, the reason why they managed to do that, did everyone hear the question or should I repeat it? So the question was about, you know, whenever we go to one of those new countries, the United Arab Emirates is one of the newest countries in the world. It was actually, it became a country in 1971, so it's like 40-something years old. So whenever we go to one of these countries,

a usual line that is always thrown at us is that we're a young country, we don't really need, we're not ready for democracy, you know. So the question is how do we counter that? And the answer really is who are you talking to? Eventually you're talking to someone who can't really express themselves.

An important point, you know, I mentioned the transition to Trump. And one thing I noticed ever since Bush is that Arab dictators generally, they work very well with Islamophobic presidents.

They work very well with Islamophobes, you know why? Well, because they base their narrative upon the idea that these people are savages, they do not deserve democracy, you cannot give them democracy, and that's why we have to rule. We are the enlightened leaders, we are the enlightened dictators who are going to bring kind of enlightenment to this region.

And who agrees with them in this kind of bleak image about the region? It's, you know, the Islamophobes. But to answer your question, one important factor is to see what kind of activism exists in the country. So whenever there is no demand for democracy,

you will actually not find any demand for democracy. You will not find people like Ahmad Mansour. We will not be even having the speech. The question here is that, sorry, the point, the key point over here is that this is a native movement. Ahmad Mansour is an Emirati citizen. He is not someone from the West saying that I want to import democracy. These are native voices.

And these are the voices that we have to really listen to whenever it comes to are we ready or not. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you very much for your speech. My name is Anna Hamida. I've got a question so we can, for example, sign the petition. We can be active at Amnesty International. What else can we do? I am a German citizen, for example. Would you suggest to have some influence on my government, to have influence on the UAE?

Well, I kind of hinted to it in the last section of my speech, which is that the world continues to sell weapons, including electronic weapons, and invest and accept investments from these governments. And that's why there is no incentive for them to actually change their behavior.

I'm not a fan. I would not actually say that we have to go all the way into banning investments in the country because investments also help society. But I think they have to feel that their public relations is taking a hit. They have to feel that what they're doing is actually damaging their public relations.

Right now, they have him in jail because they say he damaged the public relations image of the country, because they care so much about their public image that they don't want anyone to highlight any kind of human rights abuses. And this is where we have to hit. What we need is for you to help us highlight the human rights records of the country.

I think this is step number one. And where we go from there depends upon how that goes. Thank you. Hello, thank you for your presentation. My name is Romi and I am from Egypt. And I have more of a thought to share with everyone here, especially on responding to how can people help from different countries,

especially in Europe, to situations like in Emirates or in Egypt. One major oppression reason is that they always try to suppress information publications. And one main way of resistance is by people to continue publishing information. And as German people or European people, you can always submit FOIA requests to your own governments

to question the relationships with people in North Africa. So ask your German governments about military aid to the Emirates. Ask them about budget allocation to the Emirates. Ask them about relationships between the foreign affairs of German and Emirates. They always try to hide your information. And whenever you can access and publish information, it will help people like himself and Ahmad Mansour to see the bigger picture later on.

So I encourage you to always submit FOIA requests about relationships with the Middle East. That's excellent. And I would just repeat the point. There is no transparency in Arab governments. Most Arab governments are not transparent. However, in European governments, you have a measure of transparency, which is why when we want to uncover these kind of relationships,

we have to put pressure. There's no point putting pressure on the Arab governments. They're going to Stonewall. So we have to put pressure on the European governments to reveal these links and these relationships. Thank you. Excellent comment. Hi. So thank you so much, first of all, Eyad, for your amazing presentation.

My question to you was a lot of these dynamics between, for example, what Rami said about requesting information and publishing it. A lot of them are very domestic. For example, if we're talking about France, then it would be tied with French politics If it would be in the U.S., it would be tied with the U.S. politics. And one good example of this is when the Trump administration came into office,

they dropped the requirements that Bahrain had to be conforming with human rights obligations in order for the U.S. to engage in the selling of weaponry to that country. And so how would we, as advocates or even as individuals who are involved in the tech sector,

really highlight the incentives for the political actors within the U.S. to kind of fight against these kinds of measures? What incentives are there to really bring these issues to light and make these local issues in the U.S., in France, in Italy, et cetera?

I think the first part of your question answered the second part. Because that is really what, as advocates and activists, we need to be skilled at bringing these issues to local issues. We have to make them local issues. And for that, that takes a lot of skill, because you have to actually hook the wider issue into why it is important

for the security or the prosperity of this particular city or this particular municipality. And this is basically the skill that activists and advocates have to have. We would like it if everyone was global in thinking and everyone was very open-minded and thinking about the entire world.

But the fact is that most of the time, we spend most of our lives in our own city and our own environment, and that's why most of the issues we deal with are local issues. And this is why, as advocates and activists, we have to be skilled at bringing these issues, these global issues, to the local context. Thank you, Wafel.

Okay. Is there any other question? Maybe then I have a question. Is there any meet-up these days for people like you or for this issue in this area? You mean a meet-up? A meet-up, for example, that activists from...

Well, next month in Oslo, we're having the Oslo Freedom Forum. It's the ninth Freedom Forum this year. And the Freedom Forum is kind of... It's probably one of the highest-profile activist forums in the world. It's going to be from the 22nd or 24th of May. And Oslo is one and a half hours by flight away.

And it's going to be excellent speeches as well as a chance to network. So what's really different about that meet-up is that it really brings together technologists, policymakers and activists at the same time. And this is where it's an excellent community to engage,

but also a lot of ideas come out. And a lot of tech companies and investors are going to be there. So, in case you have time, end of May, just go there. Thank you very, very much for this interesting insight. And I hope you all share this and talk to you.

I would invite you to tweet on Free Ahmad. Please tweet on the hashtag FreeAhmad and sign the petition, please. Thank you. Thank you.