The following is the text of a speech I delivered at Manchester Histories Festival on June 7-8 2018, about the situation of Ahmed Mansoor and its relevance to the people of Manchester. I have hauled this long-defunct blog about life in the city out of retirement for the occasion; given the subject of the speech, it seemed appropriate to post it here. 

If you’d like to find out more about Ahmed Mansoor and the Manchester street naming campaign, go here: freeahmed.net

A year or two after I moved to Manchester in 2003, I started a blog about life in the city. As I got to know the place better, my posts became more critical. I began to question certain ways we have of doing things here. My website became a place for comment and debate. And I shared my opinions freely on social media.

The people in power wanted to silence me, and all the others too. There were warnings. I heard them, but I kept publishing. And then they came to my house early one morning. Twelve plainclothes security officers broke down the door of the home where my wife and I slept, along with our four young sons. That was March 20, 2017. Since that day I have been held at an unknown location.

That’s not true, is it? At some point there I stopped telling my story and started telling someone else’s. I’m not in prison. I stand here in front of you, a free woman in a free society. Free to voice my opinions. Free to ask questions. The man in state custody is called Ahmed Mansoor. I am here to speak for him.

Ahmed Mansoor is a pro-democracy campaigner, blogger, engineer and poet who lived in Sharjah, outside Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The recipient of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2015, he’s called the million dollar dissident, because of the incredible lengths his government went to to bug his iPhone. But a better name for him is the last dissident. The last person who was telling us what was really happening to people in the Emirates. There’s no one else. Nothing follows but silence.

The United Arab Emirates is an autocratic police state which has used the full power of its authority to repress dissent, and quash reform. In 2011, a small group of Emiratis signed a petition asking for elected representation. They were rounded up and detained. Ahmed was arrested then, and released after 8 months. They’d been on hunger strike. When he got home, he picked up his young son for the first time, and the boy started screaming. He did not recognise his own father.

But Ahmed would not be silenced. Last month he was tried – apparently, without a lawyer – and sentenced to ten years in prison for “publish[ing] false information, rumours and lies about the UAE” which “would damage the UAE’s social harmony and unity.”

We don’t know where he is now, but there is every reason to believe he is being tortured.

You might have heard his name on the news. Seen a headline flash up on your phone. Or not. Things that happen far away often seem kind of fuzzy, like they don’t occupy the same reality. We all have so much to worry about closer to home.

Some Manchester trams now show the name ‘Etihad’ as their destination. In Arabic, Etihad is a noun that means union or alliance.

In 2014, our city entered an alliance with Abu Dhabi, richest and most powerful of the seven emirates.[…]

Source: http://www.manchizzle.com/2018/06/etihad-by-kate-feld.html#links