Utterly facinating Article about Dubai

JSFLY

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2006
1,068
0
0
Just read an utterly fascinating article about Dubai and felt compelled to share.

The article shatters the myth of Dubai as an adult paradise, and reveals the hidden darkness lying within the city.

Highlights include:
Imprisoned Expats
Human Slavery
Bigoted tourists
Feces strewn in beaches of seven star hotels

Excerpt:
I An Adult Disneyland

Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as lined as her forehead now. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.

Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice - witty and warm - breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her boyfriend was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. "When he said Dubai, I said - if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you've got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him."

All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. "It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse," she says. "Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time."

Her husband Daniel bought two properties. "We were drunk on Dubai," she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. "We're not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he'd be okay. But the debts were growing. "Before I came here, I didn't know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can't pay, you go to prison.

"When we realized that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said - right, let's take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go." So Daniel resigned - but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren't covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.

"Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment." Karen can't speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.

Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. "He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn't face the shame of his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him."

Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, "but it was so humiliating. I've never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I've never..." She peters out.

Daniel was sentenced to six months imprisonment at a trial he couldn't understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. "Now I'm here illegally too," Karen says. "I've got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he's out, somehow." Looking away, almost paralyzed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.

She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.

"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is - nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing - a modern kind of place - but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."

Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...of-dubai_b_183851.html
 

ProfJohn

Lifer
Jul 28, 2006
18,161
7
0
Wow!!! Scary stuff.

This gets out and Dubai is doomed. A few boycotts and it is game over.

First thing they should do is go after the golfers who go their for the big open. That will help get the news out to everyone.
 

MikeMike

Lifer
Feb 6, 2000
45,885
66
91
i dont see the issue... they bet and gambled and lost... big... but maybe it will teach them not to go into debt.
 

dahunan

Lifer
Jan 10, 2002
18,191
3
0
With Dubai?s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.
-----Last month, local newspapers reported that Dubai was canceling 1,500 work visas every day, citing unnamed government officials. Asked about the number, Humaid bin Dimas, a spokesman for Dubai?s Labor Ministry, said he would not confirm or deny it and refused to comment further. Some say the true figure is much higher.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02...t/12dubai.html?_r=1&em
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,663
6,233
126
damn, those are harsh laws.

Note to Self: Don't declare Bankruptcy in Dubai.
 

cubby1223

Lifer
May 24, 2004
13,518
42
86
And progressives still want us here in the U.S. to feel like we're the greatest evil in the world :roll:

Guess those countries really need oil prices to spike up again.
 

StageLeft

No Lifer
Sep 29, 2000
70,150
5
0
Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Wow!!! Scary stuff.

This gets out and Dubai is doomed. A few boycotts and it is game over.

First thing they should do is go after the golfers who go their for the big open. That will help get the news out to everyone.
People know this but they are intoxicated by the wealth.

Westerners see Dubai and other UAE-type places in the Middle East and assume it's all glitz and cash, but the places are backass from a justice perspective. I remember reading of a guy arrested for trace (apparently unvisible by the eye; only detection equipment picked it up) marijuana on his shoes in the airport, some british guy. Any one of us could have weed on our shoes from God knows where, threw him in jail. The place is still a middle eastern sh*thole but with a pretty facade. There is a reason why fleeing expats sometimes leave their cars at the airport on their last flight out.

 

freegeeks

Diamond Member
May 7, 2001
5,460
1
81
I lived in the Middle-East (Bahrain) for a while. The whole region is one giant bubble.
 

Schadenfroh

Elite Member
Mar 8, 2003
38,416
4
0
Originally posted by: The Green Bean
WTF? Islamic law allows for letting a judge declare bankruptcy on behalf of an individual.

The bankruptcy laws cover non-Islamic and / or non-people of the book? (going out on a limb as assuming that the Sri Lanka guy and the couple in the OP were neither)
 

SP33Demon

Lifer
Jun 22, 2001
27,928
142
106
Originally posted by: Skoorb
The place is still a middle eastern sh*thole but with a pretty facade. There is a reason why fleeing expats sometimes leave their cars at the airport on their last flight out.

Yup, that pretty much explains it all. Hopefully their economy collapses even further and it's exposed for what it is.

 

Aimster

Lifer
Jan 5, 2003
16,129
2
0
Crap like this happens all over the world.
Apparently nobody has ever watched the t.v show captive abroad.

BTW their economy is still growing. GDP growth is 5% for the UAE.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
350
126
Originally posted by: cubby1223
And progressives still want us here in the U.S. to feel like we're the greatest evil in the world :roll:

No, we want the truth to be told, unlike you children who degrade our great nation by treating it as if it needs the lies you tell, the faults to be hidden, to be good.

Fact is, the US has a massive, complicated story that includes big goods and big bads. The real patriots - the grownups - are the ones who try to improve the flaws.

As my sig used to say:

The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.
- Robert Kennedy

The US is a great nation in so many ways, in my opinion the greatest in many ways, and I have serious issues with most other nations on things that are worse than the US.

Iran hangs gay people. You think I don't condemn that far more strongly than my many passionate posts here defending the right of gays to marry? You think there aren't such flaws all around the world, and that we shouldn't be trying to do something about them? Then again, I'm the one defending our *appropriate* efforts to do so, from diplomatic measures to foreign aid policies to strengthening the United Nations, which most who say what you say are fighitng against.
 

StageLeft

No Lifer
Sep 29, 2000
70,150
5
0
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
"OMG, Dubai is soooo scary!" :disgust:

I'd move there in a heartbeat.
Why don't you? Just in time for its bubble to pop.

 

Mardeth

Platinum Member
Jul 24, 2002
2,608
0
0
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
"OMG, Dubai is soooo scary!" :disgust:

I'd move there in a heartbeat.

Id understand if you had made this comment during the boom but now??? Why on earth would you move there?
 
Apr 17, 2005
13,465
3
81
just don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine. i gotta say tho, i don't see myself moving there or anything. i'll be going to visit my cousin there soon.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
350
126
Originally posted by: Mardeth
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
"OMG, Dubai is soooo scary!" :disgust:

I'd move there in a heartbeat.

Id understand if you had made this comment during the boom but now??? Why on earth would you move there?

[cheapshot]

Beats (take your pick: his jail cell, his mother's basement, the underpass, or Texas)

[/cheapshot]

Some people like Dubai.
 

frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
7,925
1
81
Originally posted by: MIKEMIKE
i dont see the issue... they bet and gambled and lost... big... but maybe it will teach them not to go into debt.
Yup, can't say I have a lot of sympathy. I also don't know how somebody could have moved there without knowing about debtors prison and stuff, I thought this was common knowledge.

Anyways, bad press or not, Dubai is screwed either way. I think the economic downturn has hit them pretty hard.
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,420
1,599
126
I'm not seeing a problem here.

but thanks for the article, twas an interesting read.

//edit

That construction worker life is terrible though.


And then he smiles, coming up with what he sees as his killer argument. "When I see Western journalists criticise us - don't you realize you're shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn't oil, it's hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying - I want to go to Dubai. We're very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don't have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn't gloat at our demise. You should be very worried.... Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path."
 

BassBomb

Diamond Member
Nov 25, 2005
8,390
1
81
If only people in the US who are in so much debt could have a similar outcome (especially those bankers)
 
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