00:00Dubai is home to a quarter of a million British people, and 90% of its residents are expats.
00:06Thousands of Londoners flock to the Middle East city each year, but behind the facade is a brutally
00:11repressive regime where human rights are non-existent. Many people forget that Dubai is
00:17actually a dictatorship under Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. For those wealthy people who
00:22don't care about that fact, the UAE city is a veritable paradise, with excellent schooling and
00:28great medical systems. However, there is a much darker underbelly in Dubai. According to numerous
00:34human rights experts and organisations, the city thrives off exploitation.
00:38You know, I think there's so many people that are exploited in Dubai, and, you know, a lot of people think it is just kind of the lower level, you know, people like the labourers, the cleaners, the drivers, and of course they are. I mean, they are modern day slaves in the absolute definition. I mean, you know, their passports, when they come in and their passports are taken off them, they'll have kind of
00:57labour gangs in charge of them, they'll never be able to get enough money to get their ticket home. So they're there like a hamster on the
01:03wheel, never able to leave, no control of their own life or destiny. And that's how Dubai runs. There's a reason why you go into a shop and there's 10 waiters there waiting for you, you know, because they're not being paid hardly anything.
01:20More often than not, foreign governments, including the UK, turn a blind eye to these human rights abuses.
01:26When you look at a geopolitical role, we in the West, America, we need friends in that part of the world. And they are the nice, the nicest dictator, if you like, in a way.
01:36A foreign office knows all the Brits that have been abused. They do nothing. And the reason they won't do anything is because they don't want to harm the relationship, the political relations that we have. It's not, it's too valuable.
01:48So I think they get away with an awful lot because of that. You know, if you compare it to Russia, you know, if Russia was found to have, well, they have been, to have hacked and targeted people in England, you know, there'd be sanctions, all sorts of things.
02:04So what's the solution?
02:06I think the first thing that everybody can do, everybody individually, is educate yourself on the laws. They are very different to what they might be in Europe, you know, and I think, you know, most people, if they go online, they can see what the laws are.
02:16So things like alcohol, things like sharing rooms with people that are not your wife or your husband, you know, things like signs of affection in public, what you're wearing.
02:24I think, you know, as a government, I think the government in the foreign office needs to do a lot more. I think you need to go online and you need to see, you know, the travel warnings, being honest and accurate.
02:34The government needs to advertise because so many British people go to Dubai, whether it's for a holiday or whether it's to live as expats. And the laws are so very different.
02:43You all see these cases about a Brit having been arrested for having a drink in a bar, a Brit, you know, getting drunk and being arrested, you know, all these, to us, seem silly cases.
02:55And then, you know, once they're released and they're free and they're safe, you know, I sit here and I know it's going to happen again because nothing's changed.
03:02The government's not done anything. The tall companies are not doing anything. The hotels are not advising you these things.
03:08Influencers are certainly not because Dubai is busy setting up influencer academies to promote Dubai as something that it's not.
03:17It is not a safe country to go on holiday and it really isn't.
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