Oman 2018

Yearbook 2018

Oman. According to Countryaah.com, Muscat is the capital city of Oman, a country located in Western Asia. The number of foreign nationals decreased during the year; Despite this, the two million foreign passports make up 44% of the population.

Oman ended up on the UNESCO World Heritage list during the year. In July, Qalhat, an ancient city with remnants of trade with India, China and Southeast Asia, was named.

When DJ star Tim “Avicii” Bergling was found dead in April in the capital Muskat, the country’s police announced that they did not suspect any crime and that they knew what had happened but did not want to comment on it all anymore.

• According to Abbreviationfinder: OMN is an three letter acronym for Oman.

Also in August 2014, the government passed a new citizenship law, which came into force in February 2015. It allowed authorities to deprive the nation’s citizens of their citizenship if they were supposed to belong to a group of views that would “undermine Oman’s interests”. The government was thus given a tool to arbitrarily deprive citizenship and throw its critics out of the country.

In 2015, Oman underwent the UN Human Rights Council’s periodic review (UPR). The country accepted some recommendations but rejected others. Among other things: the abolition of the death penalty, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

In January 2016, the country agreed to accept 10 prisoners from the US Guantanamo concentration camp. All yeminites.

In March 2016, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that Oman cease its harassment of the human rights activists involved in children’s rights and allowed women to pass on their citizenship to their children on an equal footing with men.

Also in March, archaeologists off the island of Al Hallaniyah identified the wreckage of the ship Esmeralda from Vasco da Gama’s voyage in 1502-03.

Denmark is actively supporting the suppression of human rights in Oman. In 2016-17, Dagbladet Information could reveal that the Danish Ministry of Business had granted export authorization for advanced monitoring equipment from the Nørresundby company BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. The permit was for exports to the dictatorial states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Morocco and Algeria. The advanced electronic equipment was used to monitor and persecute journalists, human rights activists and oppositionists. Even before the Arab Spring of 2011, BAE’s predecessor, ETI, had provided monitoring equipment to the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia. (Theme series on Danish exports of monitoring technology, Information 2016-17)

Danish technology found good use. The regime continued its campaign against journalists and bloggers. Dozens of them were brought in for questioning and exposed to threats. In 2016, at least eight were sentenced to prison sentences on weak charges. The regime followed both the print and electronic media. In August 2016, authorities closed the daily Azamn and put the editor-in-chief and two of its journalists to court after it published a series of articles on alleged corruption in government and the judiciary. Editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Ma’mari was charged with 4 matters, news editor Zaher al-‘Abri was charged with 1 ratio and Yousef al-Haj was charged with 6. Subsequently, the intelligence agency arrested another journalist, Hamoud al-Shukaily, who on Facebook criticized the arrest and charges against Azamn the reporters. In December, an appeals court overturned the closing of the newspaper, acquitted Zaher al-‘Abri and reduced the sentence of 3 years’ unconditional imprisonment the two other journalists had been sentenced to.

The United States and Britain continued their substantial financial assistance to the regime. Among other things. so that it could continue to buy weapons from these countries.