UAE Escalates Repression: Sons of Detained Human Rights Lawyer Mohammed Al-Roken Forcibly Disappeared
New wave of abuse as UAE targets family of leading political prisoner; rights groups denounce enforced disappearance and collective punishment.
Watan-In the latest chapter of the UAE’s escalating human rights abuses, rights groups have revealed that Rashid and Salem, the sons of prominent human rights lawyer and political prisoner Dr. Mohammed Al-Roken, have been forcibly disappeared for over two months. No formal charges have been announced, and their whereabouts remain unknown—an egregious violation of international humanitarian law.
Awatif Al-Rayyes, wife of fellow prisoner of conscience Dr. Abdulsalam Darwish, wrote in a painful post on X that the Al-Roken family has received no information about the fate of the brothers, apart from a brief phone call during Eid Al-Fitr. The brothers were unable to disclose any details about their conditions or location.
This total silence has prompted urgent calls for help from the family and human rights observers, amid serious concerns about torture or mistreatment—fears backed by the UAE’s well-documented record of abuse against political detainees.
Al-Rayyes wrote bitterly: “In Abu Dhabi, it’s not enough to be imprisoned for demanding reform—your children are punished too.” This chilling statement highlights the moral collapse of a regime that brands itself as a “beacon of tolerance” while systematically retaliating against peaceful reform advocates and their families.
Al-Roken: A Jailed Symbol, A Missing Justice
Dr. Mohammed Al-Roken, a leading figure in peaceful legal activism in the Gulf, has been imprisoned since 2012 for signing a petition calling for political reform in the UAE.
Though his sentence officially ended in July 2022, he remains detained—an act deemed a “grave violation of international law” by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Instead of releasing him, UAE authorities initiated new proceedings in December 2023 based on fabricated “terrorism” charges, widely believed to be a pretext for indefinite detention. Rights groups stress these charges lack legal substance and form part of a broader strategy to crush independent voices and stifle reform movements.
Collective Punishment: A Family Under Siege
The abduction of Rashid and Salem is part of a wider pattern of collective punishment. Other relatives have also been targeted, including Al-Roken’s son-in-law, Abdullah Al-Hajri—the former president of the UAE Student Union—who is imprisoned under the controversial “UAE 84” case.
This fits a long-standing pattern in which Emirati security agencies strip families of citizenship, civil rights, travel privileges, and now resort to forced disappearance to instill fear and sever community ties.
“UAE 84”: Authoritarianism in Action
In March 2025, the UAE’s Federal Supreme Court dismissed the appeals of 53 defendants in the “UAE 84” case, despite clear violations of international fair trial standards—from arrests without warrants and secret detentions to torture-extracted confessions and closed-door trials.
A recent report by the Gulf Centre for Human Rights called these proceedings a model of “systematic and totalitarian repression” that targets not only Emiratis but also migrant workers and residents of various nationalities suspected of dissent.
The Myth of Tolerance, the Reality of Prisons
While the UAE amplifies its media campaigns branding itself as a “capital of tolerance,” hosting international forums on human rights, the reality inside its prisons tells a different story: systematic repression, arbitrary detention, sham trials, psychological and physical torture, and denial of basic legal rights.
Human rights groups assert that the abduction of Al-Roken’s sons is not an isolated case but a reflection of a state policy of revenge targeting reformers and their families. This amounts to a form of collective punishment in direct violation of the values the UAE claims to uphold.
Calls for Accountability Amid Deafening Silence
Despite growing documentation of abuses, most Western powers—including the U.S. and Europe—remain silent or issue lukewarm statements, driven by economic and military ties with Abu Dhabi.
This silence, amid acts as severe as forced disappearance and torture, amounts to complicity.
Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are calling on the international community to exert meaningful pressure on the UAE—not just to release arbitrarily detained prisoners, but also to end its retaliatory tactics and immediately disclose the fate of the disappeared, including Rashid and Salem Al-Roken.
The case of Dr. Al-Roken’s family underscores that human rights in the UAE are not merely legal issues—they are deeply political and moral ones.
When demanding reform becomes a crime, and children become hostages of their parents’ views, no amount of PR campaigns can mask the collapse of justice. It’s time for the international community to scrutinize the UAE’s record seriously—because no “Museum of Tolerance” or “Women and Peace Forums” can silence the cries from behind prison bars.
