Premier League again refuses Sudan war petition urging UAE action
England’s Premier League has refused for a third time to accept a petition urging it to hold Manchester City’s owner, Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the deputy prime minister and vice president of the United Arab Emirates, to account over his country’s role in the Sudan war.
Launched in January outside Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, the petition, organised by Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), asks the chief executive, board and member clubs of football’s most popular league to raise the UAE’s support for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) with Mansour.
The Premier League refused to accept the petition on 14 October, following earlier refusals on 28 April and 21 May.
During the second attempt to deliver the petition, security personnel told CSW staff that they had been instructed not to receive anything from them, the UK-based human rights organisation said in a statement.
Manchester City and its owner, a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family and brother of its ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, are in the spotlight now after the Premier League found the club guilty of 114 charges relating to serious breaches of the league’s financial rules and a failure to cooperate with its investigation.
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Man City was found to have disguised more than £830m ($1.1bn) in illicit funding, and an independent commission’s report referred to “sham” contracts, agreements, commercial deals and arrangements struck by the club on eight separate occasions.
Manchester City has appealed the verdicts and continues to maintain its innocence, saying it has a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” to support this.
The Premier League declined to comment.
'Proxy brand'
Mansour bought the club in 2008 and propelled it to the top of English football. The connection between the football club and the image of the UAE was also clear from the start.
Garry Cook, who was Manchester City’s chief executive at the time and central to brokering the takeover, told Abu Dhabi’s representatives: “If you're developing your nation and you're looking to be on a global stage, we are your proxy brand for the nation.”
The takeover of Manchester City also brought - with the encouragement of the British government and politicians like George Osborne and Tony Blair - Emirati money and influence to Manchester, where the council cut deals with Abu Dhabi to regenerate parts of the city.
Profits from these deals were found to have been funnelled to Abu Dhabi-controlled entities in Jersey, an offshore tax haven. Tenant organisers and residents say that they have not benefited the city’s working-class population.
“I don’t mind them, but they’re a selfish bunch,” one foodbank organiser in east Manchester told MEE.
“The deal is always too good to be true. They aren’t running Abu Dhabi United Group as a charity,” said Richard Goulding, co-author of "Manchester Offshored", the University of Sheffield report that revealed many of the details of Abu Dhabi’s 2014 deal with Manchester City Council.
The Premier League’s guilty verdicts have also focused attention on Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who was mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 until earlier this year.
On Monday, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) revealed details of Burnham's meetings with Man City, including with the club's chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak. However, it did not mention two hospitality dinners the then-mayor attended with the Emirati executive at matches in 2017 and 2018.
The UAE in Sudan
Since the war in Sudan began, activists and human rights groups have sought - often without much success - to draw attention to the connection between Manchester City, the UAE and Sudan.
MEE, the UN’s independent fact-finding mission and multiple human rights organisations have reported extensively on Abu Dhabi’s support for the RSF. The UAE maintains that it is not involved in Sudan’s war, which has become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Weapons serial numbers, flight tracking data, video footage, multiple sources, and more have detailed the transfer of weapons and other support from Abu Dhabi to the RSF through Somaliland, Ethiopia, Libya and Chad.
The New York Times has reported that Mansour is in regular, direct contact with Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF leader better known as Hemedti.
'Our message to the Premier League is clear: human rights must matter as much as the financial rules'
- Abdallah Idriss Abugarda, Darfur Diaspora Association president
Earlier this year, MEE revealed the use of an Ethiopian army base by the RSF, which the UN and the US have found to have committed genocide in Darfur, the vast region of western Sudan that serves as its power base.
Colombian mercenaries have also been hired by an Emirati firm to fight for the RSF in Sudan, according to multiple investigations.
While the UAE is the main patron of the RSF, Egypt and Turkey are providing military support to its opponent, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
Speaking as she and others attempted to hand their petition to the Premier League, CSW’s team leader for Africa and the Middle East, Khataza Gondwe, highlighted that it came less than two weeks before the first anniversary of the RSF’s capture of el-Fasher.
The capital of North Darfur was taken after a lengthy siege at the end of October last year.
Victims and witnesses described to MEE a campaign of execution, rape and ransom demands by the RSF in and around the city.
The UN’s fact-finding mission concluded that all the “hallmarks of genocide” were evident in the paramilitary’s actions.
“Never again should mean never again,” Gondwe said. “But in this instance, it seems that it is over and over again.”
Abdallah Idriss Abugarda, president of the Darfur Diaspora Association, referenced Manchester City’s guilty verdicts when he said: “We are here today, not against football, but for justice, human rights and accountability... Our message to the Premier League is clear: human rights must matter as much as the financial rules. No club, no owner, no powerful institution should be beyond accountability.”
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