Doctor posting a joke on Twitter arrested in United Arab Emirates

A Lebanese doctor who tweeted a joke about the United Arab Emirates (UAE) chief family was reportedly arrested in the UAE on Twitter.

Lebanese doctor arrested for'mocking Emirati surnames'
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/lebanese-doctor-arrested-mocking-emirati-surnames

Richard Kharrat, who works as a gynecologist in Lebanon, is reportedly arrested in the UAE. UAE officials have not disclosed why Kharrat was arrested, but foreign media reported that Kharrat posted on Twitter in October 2020 that the joke was the cause.

The tweet in question was a joke containing the name of the Nahyan family , the UAE's chief family, and it was said that it could be regarded as an insult to the Nahyan family. Other radical posts such as 'The Houthis are about to bomb Burj Khalifa . I want to turn this information into truth,' Kharrat said, and these posts are believed to have led to his arrest. I am.

According to the overseas media The New Arab, the number of foreigners arrested for posting on SNS is increasing rapidly in the UAE. For example, in 2019, a British woman was arrested for 'calling her ex-husband's new wife a'horse'.'

The World Prison Brief, a non-profit organization that summarizes prison-related information around the world, reports that as of 2014, 87.8% of UAE prisoners were foreigners.