Qatar accuses UAE of ‘violence and hatred’ at world court

THE HAGUE — Qatar accused the United Arab Emirates Wednesday of a “campaign of violence and hatred” against its citizens, urging the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to quash a case brought by Abu Dhabi.

The Gulf states are locked in a battle at the UN’s top court, where the UAE on Tuesday asked judges to stop Qatar “severely aggravating” a two-year-old crisis between Doha and other countries in the oil-rich region.

Qatar’s lawyers, however, hit back, saying in fact it was Abu Dhabi who continued with “discriminatory policies that severely impacted Qatari citizens”.

“It is the Qatari people who are the true victims in the racial discrimination case, not the government of the UAE,” Qatar’s representative Mohammed Abdulaziz Al Khulaifi said.

This included Abu Dhabi’s move to gag the Doha-based and state-funded Al Jazeera global news network, which was accused of spreading “propaganda”, the lawyer told The Hague-based tribunal.

“The silencing of... media voices is part-and-parcel of the UAE’s campaign to incite violence and hatred against Qataris,” Khulaifi said.

“Qatar has long been engaged in the fight against global terrorism and it continues to be.”

Qatar has faced an economic and diplomatic boycott since June 2017 by Gulf rivals who accused Doha of backing terrorism and being too close to regional rival Iran.

Doha has repeatedly denied the claims, accusing its rivals of seeking regime change and alleging the UAE broke the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

Last June, in a case brought by Qatar, the ICJ ruled that the UAE must allow families which include Qatari members to be reunited, and that Qatari students must be given the chance to complete their education in the Emirates.

But Abu Dhabi on Tuesday went back to court, accusing Doha of blocking its own citizens from accessing Emirati websites to ease travel issues, and therefore failing to honour last year’s judgement.

Khulaifi parried those claims on Wednesday, saying that Qatar found a “high risk security breach” on the UAE’s website including so-called “malware” designed to infiltrate Qatar’s information systems.

He said Doha told Abu Dhabi about the breach but the UAE was “yet to take steps”.