Hundreds of Africans detained, deported from Abu Dhabi
- African workers in Abu Dhabi arrested and deported en masse, with rights groups saying the forced deportations were illegal
- UAE says 376 men and women detained for offences related to human trafficking, ‘extortion, assault, and acts contrary to public morality’
Kabirat Olokunde, a Nigerian migrant worker, planned to spend her birthday with friends in the city of Abu Dhabi. Instead, she turned 28 in a frigid prison cell, one of about 700 Africans imprisoned by Emirati authorities.
In unparalleled mass arrests, the workers were jailed with “no legal justification” on the night of June 24-25, and later started being deported, said ImpACT International for Human Rights Policies and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
“I celebrated my birthday in chains, with no mattress,” Olokunde said by phone from the Nigerian city of Lagos, where she was deported on August 3 without access to her belongings.
“I still have the trauma in me,” added the single mother, who is now jobless after working as a bus attendant and caretaker in Abu Dhabi, a regional trade and tourism hub that is part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
In an Interior Ministry statement on Friday, the UAE said it had detained 376 men and women for offences related to human trafficking, “extortion, assault, and acts contrary to public morality”.
It said most of them were deported, but another 50 remained in prison because of a lack of travel documents.
