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Rights body says it has no ties with extremist groups

Emirates Human Rights Association alleges centre under fire distorting association’s image.

Following reports in the British media linking an apparent local human rights committee to extremist groups, secretary for the Emirates Human Rights Association (EHRA) Khalid Al Hossani, has told Khaleej Times human rights in the UAE remain its top priority, adding it has no ties with the centre which is under question.

He said the Emirates Centre for Human Rights (ECHR) is based outside the country and derived its name from the EHRA to help gain recognition.

The ECHR has been attached to several terrorists movements including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Hossani made it clear that despite a similarity in the names, EHRA has no ties with the committee under fire.

This centre, he said, tried to distort the image of the UAE-based EHRA by releasing incorrect and misleading reports about the UAE by not verifying the authenticity of the information they have on hand.

Al Hossani said the EHRA, the sole body which represents the civil society in the UAE, has over 700 members of different nationalities and religions and has 14 committees set up tasked with guaranteeing human rights in the country are maintained.

He pointed out that the EHRA also participates in several events outside the country to support human rights worldwide.

The ECHR, he claims, compiles and obtains its information from social networking sites and takes advantage of any case and issue against the UAE and abuses it.

“This is a politically oriented organisation and has no professionalism in handling human rights” Al Hossani noted.

The news reports released by the ECHR show that it has a political extremist trend and tries to garble the image of the region and promote a message which is false and fabricated.

He said the EHRA has to constantly defend itself from harms as a direct result of the centre’s actions, especially through information shared on social networking sites, as the ECHR often refers to ‘Emirates human rights’ in its fabricated reports, which many associate with EHRA.

“That organisation, (the duplicated one), neither made field visits nor meetings with cases of alleged human rights abuses in the country which it shows in its reports.”

Therefore, the reports that ECHR issues cannot be trusted, he added.

malzarooni@khaleejtimes.coms