Qatar has told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) the UAE has launched a “campaign of violence and hatred” against Qatar’s citizens. The ICJ was also urged on Wednesday to quash a case against Qatar filed by the UAE.
On Tuesday, the UAE asked ICJ judges to stop Qatar ‘aggravating’ a two-year-old crisis between Qatar and other countries in the region. Lawyers representing Qatar struck back and said it was the UAE which was persisting 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.
Speaking on attempts to gag Al Jazeera, Al Khulaifi said, “The silencing of media voices is part-and-parcel of the UAE’s campaign to incite violence and hatred against Qataris. Qatar has long been engaged in the fight against global terrorism and it continues to be.”
In June 2018, in a case brought by Qatar, the ICJ ruled 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.
On Tuesday, the UAE returned to court and accused Qatar of blocking its own citizens from accessing to ease travel issues, and therefore failing to honour last year’s judgment. Al Khulaifi also told the court Qatar found a “high risk security breach,” including so-called malware designed to infiltrate Qatar’s information systems, on Emirati websites purported to ease travel issues of affected Qataris. He said the UAE had been informed of the breach but UAE was “yet to take steps”.