The former UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson has pulled out of a literary festival in Dubai after the publication of an open letter by authors, MPs and campaign groups calling for the release of the jailed Emirati human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor.
Robinson, a former Irish president, had come under fire after claiming on a visit to Dubai last month that an Emirati princess campaigners said was being held against her will was “in the loving care of her family”.
The letter to the Guardian, signed by figures including Stephen Fry, comes as a spotlight falls on authors planning to attend the Emirates Airline festival of literature in Dubai, tickets for which went on sale at the weekend.
Robinson had been due to appear at the festival on 2 March, according to its website. Her Dublin-based foundation told the Guardian on Monday: “In response to the open letter received by the Guardian, Mrs Robinson has advised the organisers that she will not be attending the literature festival.”
Tickets are also on sale for talks by authors including Ian Rankin and Douglas Coupland, both of whom have been supporters of the freedom of expression group PEN.
The festival, sponsored by the state-owned airline, counts the British cafe chain Costa and Oxford University Press among its 2019 partners. It is being held under the patronage of Dubai’s ruler and the UAE’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.
His daughter, Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum, has become the focus of an international campaign after she was allegedly seized from a yacht last year by UAE commandos and brought back to the Gulf state, which her friends said she considered a gilded prison.
The letter, also signed by the authors Amanda Craig, Jonathan Emmett, James Mayhew and Nicola Davies, is addressed to the princess’s father and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Mansoor, who was jailed for posts he made on Facebook and Twitter.
“Mr Mansoor’s arrest and the charges against him relate solely to the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and association. Therefore, we consider him a prisoner of conscience,” states the letter, which was organised by the International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE.
Emmett told the Guardian: “The case of Princess Latifa is one of the more high-profile examples of human rights abuses and misogyny in the UAE and has penetrated the public’s consciousness in a way that Ahmed Mansoor’s has not, but both are only the latest in a string of human rights violations in the UAE.
“There is a tendency on the part of some authors to think of patrons and sponsors as being separate from those abuses, but they really should give cause for concern.
“When you attend a festival like this one, you are lending your respectability to it. Many of the same authors have a massive problem with Donald Trump, and I am sure they would not support something in his name, and yet they seem to have no problem with doing it for Sheikh Mohammed.”
The historian Antony Beevor, the novelist Sabine Durrant and the BBC journalist Frank Gardner were among those who confirmed their withdrawal from the festival last year over the jailing of the British PhD student Matthew Hedges. They are not now listed as attendees.
