‘The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance,” Irish lawyer John Philpot Curran famously observed, and the events in Bahrain and in the courts in Abu Dhabi this week show this endlessly-requoted and often misattributed aphorism is as true for the UAE in 2014 as it was when he said it in Dublin in 1790.
The improvised bomb that killed UAE police officer Tariq Al Shehi and two other officers near Manama on Monday caused the first Emirati casualty since 500 UAE police were sent to help their Bahraini counterparts quell Shiite-led protests in Bahrain in 2011. The use of bombs has become an increasingly common tactic in the ongoing conflict.
On the same day, the Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi imposed jail terms of up to seven years on an Islamist from Qatar and two Emirati colleagues on charges of aiding an illegal organisation for channelling Dh10 million to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The recipients of that money – Emirati members of the Muslim Brotherhood – were convicted in their absence last year of sedition and trying to overthrow the Government.
All this shows that despite the UAE’s image as an oasis of calm, order and tolerance in the midst of a turbulent region undergoing the ructions of the Arab Spring, there are cogent threats to that peacefulness that deserve to be treated with the utmost seriousness.
The debate here is one many other nations, both in the Middle East and around the world, are having: where do you strike the balance between security and freedom? To what extent should the state’s duty to ensure the protection of those living within its borders authorise it to encroach upon the way they conduct their lives?
This is a dialogue each community must have, finding an answer that matches the threat level. The events of this week show that striking that balance in the UAE must reflect the genuine risks posed to the stability and security enjoyed by all of those who call this nation home, whether temporarily or as citizens.
For those in the UAE and beyond who are tasked with keeping us all safe, it is worth noting that Mr Curran’s famous quote is an abbreviation of his original, which concluded: “Which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”