The United Arab Emirates is in many ways a great place to live and offers plenty of interesting things to do. For example this past weekend the WOMAD (World of Music & Dance) festival once again took place in Abu Dhabi. A number of great bands played during each of the 3 nites, including Baaba Maal (Mali), Paloma Faith (UK), Jimmy Cliff (Jamaica), Speed Caravan (France/Algeria), and Hindi Zahra (Morocco). At the same time, however, the UAE's not such a great place when it comes to its human rights record. Within the past few days three pro-democracy activists have been arrested here (including an economics professor from the Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi branch) and the UAE government has shut down their Facebook forum (known as Hewar, meaning "Dialog" in English). Here's an on-line article about the arrests:
http://en.news.maktoob.com/20090000682096/UAE_police_hold_third_activist_colleague/Article.htm
And here's the Facebook site, which is now blocked here in the UAE:
www.facebook.com/pages/UAE-hewar/138966642807420
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