With Matthew Hedges now jailed for life, we need an academic boycott of the UAE

Eleven British universities have branches in the UAE. It may be time for them to rethink their involvement.

On Wednesday, a young British student was sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on charges of spying on behalf of the UK government.

It is a ruling that has caused shock and outrage across Britain – so much so that the government have been forced to issue strong condemnations of their “friend and trusted partner” on the Arabian Peninsula.  

Matthew Hedges, who is originally from Exeter, was seized at Dubai airport in May as he attempted to leave the country following a two-week research trip for his doctoral thesis on Emirati security and foreign policies after the Arab Spring.

The Durham University PhD student went on to be held without charge for over five months in solitary confinement, where he was denied access to a lawyer and refused regular contact with his family and consular officials.

In a slap-dash hearing that lasted barely five minutes at which he had no lawyer present, Hedges was sentenced to life after being found guilty of “spying on the UAE and providing sensitive security and intelligence information to third parties.”

This was in spite of repeated assurances to the contrary from his university and the Foreign Office, who reportedly made it clear to the UAE authorities that at the very worst this young student was naïve but was certainly not an undercover MI6 agent.   

It is a ruling which is seemingly a million miles away from Dubai’s playground for the rich and famous, with its five star hotels and golden beaches.

But it will come as little surprise to the scores of other academics detained in the UAE, such as Dr Nasser bin Gaith – the distinguished Emirati economist serving ten years for Tweets critical of the authorities.

Neither will it shock Ahmed Mansoor, an award-winning rights activist serving a ten-year sentence for supposedly ‘defaming’ the UAE on social media.

Nor Tayseer al-Najjar, a Jordanian journalist who was disappeared for over a year before being sentenced to three years in prison for “spreading false information” after criticising Emirati foreign policy on Facebook.

For in reality, yesterday’s verdict marked the culmination of years of repression in the UAE in which the Emirati authorities have been given carte blanche by their western allies to act with near total impunity.  

None more so than by the UK government, who in recent years have actively propped up the regime: providing training to their security forces, selling them weapons for their blood-soaked campaign in Yemen and approving the sale of surveillance technologies which the authorities have used to spy on their citizens.

These burgeoning ties have extended to the field of education. No fewer than 11 British universities have branches in the UAE, including City University, London Business School, Birmingham and Middlesex. The Gulf state has also invested heavily in Middle East Departments in UK campuses, such as at LSE.

Hedges’ case has predictably caused outrage across this community with hundreds of academics worldwide signing an open letter calling not just for his release, but for an academic boycott of the country.

Today, staff at Birmingham University will vote on whether to implement such a boycott of its Dubai campus, which opened in September.  If this case drags on, others will surely follow suit.

The UAE’s Attorney General reiterated yesterday that this verdict was not ‘final’. This is significant as it begs the question as to what the endgame is.

The UAE will not want to scupper lucrative trade and security relations with the West. At the same time they do not want to see a wave of academics delving too deeply into their security apparatus.

Ultimately, a message has been sent. And in future academics are likely to tread more carefully in the country. For the UAE, this would be a perfect outcome.

But for UK institutions, this represents a genuine threat to their academic freedom. There can surely no longer be any justification for them to continue partnerships in such circumstances. Staff and students alike must now press management for a nationwide boycott.

Joe Odell is the campaigns manager of the International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE.

Last week, Left Foot Forward revealed that the University of South Wales was honouring UAE government ministers while Matthew Hedges was in solitary confinement.

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