Marcus, from Tottenham, North London, had been enjoying a holiday with his parents when he met a fellow Brit at the same hotel. A holiday fling sparked and the pair spent time together until the girl, also from London, flew back to Britain.
In Dubai, if an adult has a sexual relationship with a person under 18, they can be prosecuted for having a sexual relationship with a minor. The relationship would be legal in the UK.
Marcus and his parents were set to fly back shortly after - but their plans were thrown into chaos when police knocked on their hotel room door. The “terrified” teenager was then reportedly hauled in for questioning without any explanation and held at the Al Barsha Police Station, DID said. He spent three days there, during which time he was not allowed to make a phone call or speak with his parents, it is claimed.
You Europeans really gotta stop vacationing in fucking Dubai, there are way cooler places to fly to.
It’s fucking Dubai… Why would you want to go there?
A monument to man’s arrogance, literal slaves, rampant misogyny, homophobia Yada Yada. Terrifying laws based on ultra conservative religions. Routinely one of the hottest places in the world and extremely expensive.
Just fucking why?
Because for some people those are features.
But for people who those are features, they are very likely to be Muslim or at the least Arabic and therefore, probably somewhat similar to their home.
I’m saying for a westerner, to think you can go the and have a great time safely, you’re deluded.
But for people who those are features, they are very likely to be Muslim or at the least Arabic
Uh, I don’t think so. Perhaps very specifically the religious laws, but besides that you don’t have to look far among westerners to find those for whom…
man’s arrogance, literal slaves, rampant misogyny, homophobia […] one of the hottest places in the world and extremely expensive
… are rather a nice prospect, actually.
This place is so backwards.
Let’s look the past the fact you’re a moron, attempting to make a point on behalf of your brother’s in christ, the gays.
And let’s dive in.
Are there homophobic and misogynistic westerners who like slaves? Absolutely.
Now have a think how many of them also like Muslims and the middle east and want to go to a Muslim country with no alcohol that judges them?
Sshhhhhhh child, no more talking.
Lmao the “shh child” such a bad boy
deleted by creator
I have the same mindset against Dubai and would never visit it. That said I know a perfectly normal colleague who has been there with his family 2 or 3 times and said he would probably go there again. Don’t recall why they liked it there that much.
You just can’t get the same calibre of mouth-shitting instagram whores anywhere else.
100%, I hated every minute of my layover wandering that shit-quality SimCity attempt, the bubble popped real fast once I talked to some locals.
I can’t wait for the sand to bury that cruel slave labor shitberg.
deleted by creator
‘Please tell my family in Pakistan that I’m still alive’ probably
“The restaurants are mid.”
My dad got there. They literally brainwashed him within a week. We had to prove him on multiple accounts that the tour guide lied to him.
elaborate omg??
I don’t know details anymore (10+ years ago) but in the vein of the economy being great and important, culture open minded, politics being exemplary, that stuff.
Like, you know, rest of the Europe
Fuck Dubai.
Signed me, who grew up there.
Dubai is a terrible place. People need to stop going there.
I even worry about transiting places like this.
We Pakistanis don’t have much of a choice… We often have to stop at Dubai or Doha if we want to fly to Europe or the Americas. (Although occasionally, you can choose Turkish Airlines and stop at Istanbul instead.) Though to be fair, Pakistan can’t be much more friendly than Dubai to a lotta people…
Hard to feel sorry about anyone travelling to Dubai.
Correct for adults, but this was the kid travelling with his parents. It’s likely that the decision was the parents’ - also, most kids are not very well-versed in politics.
I’m pretty sure his parents were the ones making the trip and he was forced to come along whether he wanted to or not what with him living under his parents’ roof.
You don’t have to be rich to travel there. My brothers and their mother traveled there, not rich by any means. I’m probably more well off, but I haven’t been there. 🤷♂️
But maybe that wasn’t your point? Sorry if I assumed incorrectly!
They meant traveling to a pseudo-religious dictatorship
Yes, definitely! People should be allowed to break the law of the land if they disagree with it!
/s
I mean… Okay. But… A place can be interesting to visit despite its government. 🤷♂️
That’s not what this is about. Can you understand what you read?
Can you not be a dick about it?
Agree, it was a bit snappy.
I guess you just wanted to be snappy and leave the conversation? Cool…
I… can, yes. Why does it seem like I can’t? Why don’t you fill me in? 🙏
No need to be so hostile. 👍
I think you’re right, but also it says something about the personality too. I know great, respectable people in their own way who have gone there, but in general I agree with the vibe that it’s for “rich people who don’t care about inequality”
This is only applicable to people who have a wide variety of choices to pick from - if you ca only choose Dubai because your parents worked there as expats then you’re probably in the clear.
Knowing my family, Hanlon’s razor definitely applies here. People do not always know what’s going on politically or otherwise in a tourist place they visit. My family are not “great respectable people” (they’re good people though), so I’m gonna go with ignorance, for sure. 😅
Not sure why this is down voted lol. I’m just sharing an experience or life situation, and getting down voted. So strange. I feel like I’m back on Reddit. People don’t change from platform to platform, I guess.
This doesn’t actually say much about anyone’s actual wealth status in your story, you’re just saying you have more then them I guess? No banana for scale offered.
“They only have 2 yachts and only one can land a full size helicopter - so yeah… you don’t have to be rich to go to Dubai”
I’m curious how the authorities were even aware of this occurring. The article says they were on holiday, so it’s not like there was much time. How did anyone notice their ages? Was it just fishing for a charge because of unrelated reasons?
Either
-
They’re always watching. I’m in tech and was taught in my security training - when traveling to countries with extremely strong surveillance, assume you are bugged. Family could be high valued and they wanted something from the parents. Probably a bit too tinfoil hat.
-
Vengeance girl’s parents could be assholes/racist. As a dude, Ive had my share of “mommy & daddy doesn’t like me for taking their precious flower”. Multiplier in effect if they have a problem that I’m a PoC.
It was the mother of the girl. She got back to the UK found out about the boy and contacted the Dubai authorities. Apparently the girl was days off her 18th birthday too. It was in the news report when he was originally arrested.
Wrecked a young man’s life for some bullshit reason.
I think either of those are super plausible. There will be people where they stayed who are happy to snitch, no bugs required. On top of that, the UAE has one of the highest concentration of surveillance cameras in the world. Like 30,000 in Dubai. Throw in some facial recognition cross referenced with the list of folks on vacation or on business in the city and it’s real easy to find out who is spending time together, what their ages are, and what their kids will look like.
The second one happens all the time. Happened to me when I turned 18 before my then girlfriend. Her mom threatened me with jail and all kinds of shit even though it was perfectly legal and we were only a couple of months apart. She just didn’t like me or the fact that I was dating her daughter. Would have probably been worse if I had been a PoC.
You’ve left out the good old snitch, my understanding is they’re pretty darn strict with anything that involves women over there, so maybe someone from the hotel saw something and reported it.
If you check the article it says it’s the 2nd case, the girl’s parents notified the Dubai authorities
-
Did you read the article?
The girls mother reported him to the Dubai police.
Hopefully her identity is revealed to the public and she faces some consequences for her actions. Maybe it’s already been leaked or released elsewhere, but it wasn’t in that article.
I don’t believe that detail was in the article when I read it, but I’m unable to find any copies from before the update. I can tell you the article now is very different from the original.
deleted by creator
Probably saw them socializing and then followed him on security cameras. Possibly seeing him go in her hotel room or vice versa. Then they haul him in and he admits what went on
But why were they watching in the first place? How did they know their ages?
Authoritarian countries like Dubai watch visitors.
It would be pretty easy (with big error bars but since when did authoritarians give a shit about that?) to set up some alerts based on facial recognition when someone under 18 (they have their passport information) is hanging out with someone over 18 who did not arrive in the same party.
I think everyone here thinks that Dubai is like Saudi Arabia. It’s not. Nobody at all cares who is having sex or not in Dubai, there’s a thriving sex work industry there. The police aren’t monitoring for couples or care. This only got escalated because a mother complained and the daughter was underaged.
If you have money.
Otherwise, the authorization laws are there, ready to be applied when convenient
https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-arab-emirates/freedom-world/2020
Please note freedom house can certainly be considered biased in their rankings, but their descriptions of conditions or situations is relevant
It’s not a free country, but that’s not relevant to the point I was making above. They’re still not sex policing like Afghanistan or Iran. On that topic they’re closer to Las Vegas.
And yes, the authorization laws are everywhere, I know an American who got charged with adultery in the US because he had an unfriendly prosecutor. I think you’re missing my point.
You can have concerns with the bias of the source but it’s relevant for discussion. It’s not like you say, you walk a razor of financially guarded privledge there, and many folks do not live as you describe.
You’re describing the advertised, candy coated version.
Late edit: to compare the authoritarian concerns in UAE / Dubai to the US is disrespectful to folks who live there.
Even later edit, I bet you didn’t see this cause you downvoted me the moment i posted lol,
It’s not a requirement to be Afghanistan-bad to be still a very problematic place, and comparing the private liberties of either to America is a miss.
No. While there is a ton of inequality, there, it still does not change the fact that UAE is not Iran or Afghanistan, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, the police will still not arrest you for holding hands in public, police will not stop to ask you if you’re married to the girl you’re with, and if you’re having sex outside of marriage literally nobody will care. UAE does not have morality police like Saudi did. You failing to make this distinction undermines the rest of your argument. As to this story, the police in any country would take notice if a woman called and said her daughter is underage and with a man in a foreign country, so it’s not surprising he got detained and the story progressed from there.
Out of respect, I had late edits focused on the relativism between countries.
Uae / Dubai is a authoritarian surveillance state far beyond the US or any western country. They have the money to be “pro” about it and don’t need roving squads of cops making street arrests. That doesnt mean the civil liberties of many aren’t adjacent to the likes of other worse authoritarian theocracies.
Regarding the later point, I agree, if given a reputable concern from the family, I don’t fault Dubai for making legitimate inquiries, based on evidence.
Aside from those specifics, There is no reason to defend these countries, they won’t reward you.
Sry no sympathies. You vacation in a religiously oppressive hell hole this is what you get. Stay the fuck out of Dubai.
Okay look. This dude is 18. His brain isn’t fully developed, he didn’t even graduate from high school yet, his hormones are out of control, and he has a penis.
If you still can’t see why he wasn’t thinking clearly, please read this article Teen Brain: Behavior, Problem Solving, and Decision Making from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
No sympathies? He didn’t choose where to vacation, his parents did. Should children pay for their parents’ mistakes?
I wonder if there is a law in the UK that would allow the parents of the boy to sue the mother of the girl for snitching. Like, she weaponized the laws of another country that criminalize behaviours that are legal in the UK, for things that happened between UK citizens abroad. That sounds like something UK legislators might have the power and incentive to legislate, right?
Also, I would not fault the girl if she hated her horrible mother for the rest of her life.
£20 says she’s white and racist.
I have the family’s next vacation picked out! Saudi Arabia, where they’ll have a fully stocked bar of alcohol and pork waiting for them to enjoy! What could go wrong!
Stop spending your money in these Islamofascist countries!
Backward degenerates.
You know, laws and code have a lot in common. In both, if you change something at the wrong place, another totally unrelated part will behave different or stop working entirelly. And then there’s edge cases, whose handling was entirely forgotten.
Poor Marcus - I have a feeling this wouldn’t be an issue if he was white.
Nonsense.
The comments in this thread are practically Islamophobic and naive.
When you travel to another country, just abide by its culture and customs.
Like you cant go to India and disrespect cows, or now eat beef in public.
The comments are also naive because they show how unaware the commenters are about what actually goes on in rich countries and events for affluent people.
Uh yeah fuck Islam. Fuck the Judaism and Christianity too. See? Easy.
They’re certainly old enough
Okay so how do I fuck these religions exactly? I can go to these theocratic states and start doing whatever I want? Symbolising my freedom?
Why don’t you try it? Let’s see how far you can go to freeing humanity from the shackles of religion.
“The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien [beliefs and cultures]. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam, and it might not be unreasonable to suggest that it would have been better for Western civilization if Greece had moulded it on this question rather than Palestine.”
When you travel to another country, just abide by its culture and customs.
WDYM? The prophet “married” a
139 year old.Edit: It’s even worse.
Islamophobic? Nah. Naive, hell yeah. You should watch what you do like a hawk when you’re going to places like Dubai. Have a good understanding of what is legal and what isn’t, like eating outside during Ramadan - this can get you actual jailtime instead of a fine or a slap on the wrist like you’d expect.
Dubai is a shithole full of rich assholes and their slave workers and influencers who are paid to paint it in pink online.
i like the part where they have a constant line of tanker trucks moving shit from buildings to wherever they dump it, because they couldn’t be bothered building a sewage system.
POOP TRUCK POOP TRUCK
You thinking that acknowledging theocracy as awful is bigotry?
When you go through puberty, every single cell in your body is telling you to have sex NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW due to well over a billion years of evolution.
This culture is punishing a teenager for not fighting evolution.
Of course, they probably don’t believe in evolution either, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re punishing a teenager for lacking self-control (like most teenagers) and doing what his body is telling him to do in order to fulfil his biological imperative.
Akshually it’s islamophobia to say that a lot of the laws in Dubai are bad!
I really hope y’all ain’t defending his actions. The age of consent is the age of consent. That he couldn’t keep it in his pants is on him. It doesn’t matter what the AoC in UK is when you’re in another country.
The law not having a provision for such a situation is a completely separate issue. To criticise that is valid. It still doesn’t give him an excuse to break it.
The age difference is less than a year are you fucking insane, legality is not morality and we should always push back against unjust laws
…in Dubai? No one has a voice there
Weird hill to die on but ok. Again, the law itself can be argued about, breaking it not really. No one made him jump in bed, nor is the law some violation of human rights. “Don’t shag people under 18” is not a tall ask.
you have no idea how easy but low it is to trick an underage girlfriend into sex. age of consent is 18 regardless of age difference for a reason. if you have an underage girlfriend, you should wait until she can consent and choose what to do with her body
You realize in the vast majority of the world there ARE exceptions for exactly this reason. Teenagers do what they’re gonna do.
What do you think on your 18th birthday you magically grow a consent organ? If they’re both teenagers there’s really no issue.
It creates an few different odd possibilities though, in the UK you can be married before 18, let’s say an 18 year old wife and her 17 year old husband went on their honeymoon to Dubai, would they legally be allowed to consummate their marriage?
Would Dubai recognise their marriage?
Simply don’t visit Dubai then. Because “no”.
I too read every law of a foreign country before I visit them. /s
Word to the wise, there are countries you absolutely should read the laws for certain things.
Like Singapore. Watch out with things like ADHD meds which need prior approval.
I agree, but most people aren’t going to do more than search “important rules to know before visiting x”.
I mean… When I searched for “important rule to know before visiting dubai” I found this: https://www.expatwoman.com/dubai/guide/faqs/expatwomans-guide-to-dubai-etiquette-how-to-behave-in-dubai
The following are also considered illegal in Dubai: use or possession of drugs, cohabitation, sex outside of marriage, having a baby out of wedlock, adultery and homosexuality.
Important to note that I DO NOT blame the teens. They were doing what teens do. BUT they would have been well advised to research Dubai a bit more than, say, France for what to do and what not to do.
This arrest is shitty and the comment above you is stupid, but you should absolutely be aware of the laws of wherever you go. Being a visitor somewhere doesn’t bestow the right to ignore the law.
Yes, although I wouldn’t really expect a teenager to read up on age of consent laws, especially when traveling. They probably should, but I wouldn’t think them likely to.
let the lad get a piece of pussy smh
