In a welcome, if bizarre, turnaround, Dubai prosecutors have reportedly dropped charges against a British woman who was arrested earlier this month after reporting she had been raped in a hotel room by two British men.
Authorities confiscated the woman's passport accusing her of extramarital sex, a crime punishable by imprisonment and flogging. The case, which has led some rights groups to advise women not to report rape in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has attracted significant media attention.
![Tolerant image: Burj Khalifa in the middle in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.](/web/20161127094446im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/1/9/f/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gswr7t.png/1480031204240.jpg)
It is also not the first time a foreign tourist has found herself at odds with the country's dubiously applied laws.
With its seven-star hotels, glitzy shopping malls, desert safaris, and glamorous nightlife, Dubai has catapulted into fourth place on the world's most popular tourist destinations, attracting more than 14 million visitors last year.
One of seven cities that makes up the UAE, Dubai has achieved this feat partly through presenting itself as an exciting, modern and open destination, something seemingly at odds with the deep conservatism of other countries in the Gulf.
But this progressive exterior masks a puritanical and misogynist application of Islamic law that ensnares vulnerable and unsuspecting women.
In 2008, Australian Alicia Gali was jailed for eight months after a brutal rape which left her with broken bones. Two years later, a British woman faced court for extramarital sex after she reported being raped by a waiter at her hotel.
According to Radha Stirling, from the rights group Detained in Dubai, the obsessive focus on image is part of the problem.
![Dubai is working hard to appeal to westerners as a fun holiday destination: the water park in front of Jumeirah Beach Towers.](/web/20161127094446im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/h/j/c/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gswr7t.png/1480031204240.jpg)
'It's all about appearance, not functionality," she writes in The Independent. With the government more interested in pumping money into development projects that cement Dubai's glamorous reputation, there is little interest in funding and developing the UAE's still relatively new legal system.
This leaves it to individual police officers and prosecutors to interpret the law. And this is where it gets bad.
![Contradictions: a model walks the runway at a fashion show at the Dubai Design District last month.](/web/20161127094446im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/9/k/w/b/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gswr7t.png/1480031204240.jpg)
Because rape convictions can only be handed down either when the alleged perpetrator confesses or when there are four male witnesses, neither of which is usually forthcoming, the accusation of assault by the woman is often interpreted as a confession of extramarital sex.
This, according to Nicholas McGeehan who researches the UAE for Human Rights Watch, says less about Islamic law itself and more about the police who choose to lay charges. Namely that they simply don't believe the women, and instead choose to invoke the immorality law to invalidate the victim's claim. "They accuse them of having consensual sex," he told The Daily Beast, "and because of that, any forensic examination is rendered obsolete."
This is where the decision of prosecutors in this case seems at odds with the law. Media reports indicate that prosecutors decided to release the woman after examining video evidence filmed on a mobile phone and declared the acts "consensual" on the part of all three parties.
But why would they drop the charges against her given that, as McGeehan notes above, consensual sex is still considered a crime? In fact, this only makes her arrest all the more disturbing by suggesting that getting raped is indeed a crime whereas consensual sex is not.
Given this case has generated significant international attention, it is likely prosecutors were simply keen to avoid further unwelcome publicity. This also has precedent.
In 2013, Norwegian woman Marte Dalelv was convicted of having consensual sex and sentenced to 16 months in prison after she had been raped. Following objections from Norwegian officials as well as media and public outrage, the government issued her a pardon.
While positive outcomes for individual cases are certainly welcome, this doesn't help in cases where media attention is scant. Nor is it only women reporting assault who find themselves caught between the Emirates' progressive exterior and repressive interior.
Foreigners have been arrested for indiscretions including holding hands in public, and even, under the UAE's 2012 cybercrime laws, complaining about inconsiderate parking habits and mocking local hip hop wannabes on social media. These laws also make it a crime to criticise the government and organise peaceful demonstrations.
What this seems to indicate is a deliberate move on the part of the UAE to minimise the cultural impact of foreign tourism on local society. And so we have a situation where commercial interests are at odds with laws aimed at maintaining an authoritarian monarchy.
Given it is often western women who fall prey to these laws, how do we respond? On the one hand, as outsiders we do not have the right to interfere in the sovereign laws of another country, but on the other, women are getting persecuted for being victims of sexual assault and doing what we encourage all women to do: report it.
Moreover, given the UAE is deliberately promoting a liberal, tolerant image of itself to attract business and leisure travellers then it is fair to ask for some consistency.
This is not about attacking Islam or playing western saviour. This is about challenging the UAE on its insistence on having it it both ways. Dubai must either live up to the image it has carefully crafted for itself or drop the façade so that no more innocent women fall victim to unsympathetic police officers and the unjust application of a legal system that is crying out for reconstruction.