A day after that article (and many others, in different news sources and social media sites) ran, the victim was "pardoned" and allowed to leave the UAE.
I've put "pardoned" in quotation marks, but that is quite literally what happened. The woman was charged with (convicted of? It's not clear) consuming alcohol, having sex outside of marriage, and making a false statement to the police (stemming from when she tried to improve her situation by changing her story and claiming that the sex was consensual). When Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum pardoned her of those crimes on Monday, she was free to go.
Guess who else was free to go? Her rapist.
There are so many issues with this case that it's hard to know where to begin. The UAE's The National newspaper has had an interesting series of articles in the past few days that give some perspective.
First, The National points out in an editorial that yes, the UAE needs to take a hard look at how it treats victims of sexual violence. It also highlights a key element of this case, which is that at one point, for whatever ill-advised reason (and it was advised to her; by whom is in dispute), the victim said the sex was consensual, which is a crime in the UAE. That seems to have complicated her situation beyond the awful experience of being arrested in the aftermath of a rape, for consuming alcohol.
Second, The National gives a fuller account of the victim's experiences, and places them in the context of the legal system where they took place.
Lastly, The National explains how Sharia Law is and is not relevant to this case, and explains more about the finer points of rape law in the UAE. Coming from a Western perspective, it's certainly a relief to know that the crime of rape does not have to be established by the witness of four males. However, there is still plenty to be squicked out about, particularly if we are to accept the comments of the legal consultant quoted in the above article. For starters, the consultant seems to imply that a woman can give consent just by being drunk. Um, no. Also, he says that "how...strongly a victim [resists]" can determine whether it was rape or not. I'm not sure that's a benchmark we want to even begin to define.
I'm especially interested in the controversy and East/West divide surrounding this case because it is tangentially related to my thesis. I am studying the experiences of Westerners who come to the UAE to teach English. In my thesis, I discuss the appeal of the UAE to Western teachers because it offers them a style of living that, on the surface, seems to be on par with what they are used to in their home countries.
But there are very real differences between Dubai and, say, London. Sometimes, under the gloss and glare of Dubai's charms, those important distinctions are lost. Those of us who are guests in the UAE - which is to say, most of the population - ignore these fundamental and sometimes quite alarming differences at our peril. Many of us are used to a Western-style treatment of the report of rape, which, while not without its weaknesses and misapplications, at least has a built-in sense of presumed innocence on the part of the victim. As this and other cases show, however, even something that seems so basic to Westerners cannot at all be assumed when you're in the UAE.
By Western standards of justice and legality, what happened to the Norwegian woman in Dubai was truly atrocious - the crime itself, and her treatment by the police afterward. But when you look at the case in its Eastern context, everything turns on its head and it's hard to know what to think. Taking a more benign example, is it fundamentally ridiculous that during Ramadan, I cannot take a drink from a bottle of water during daylight hours in public, including in my own vehicle, without risking someone reporting me to the police? Well, yeah, but so says me and my Western upbringing and life experiences and status as a non-Muslim. It's almost as if there is no right answer...except that the "right answer" in a rape case should never involve the victim being put in jail, not even for a little while, not even if she was drunk when she made the report in a country where being drunk is a crime.
What are your thoughts on this case?