“We would never permit anything to be seen that, in any way whatsoever, offended our country or our ruler, that could cause disorder, that insulted religion, that displayed immoral images or promoted the vices of alcoholism or drug use.”  Thus the comments of Aleem Jumaa, spokesman for the censor’s office of Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates, about the decision to censor part of Syriana, the much-discussed recent film by George Clooney.

The censor’s clout
The film will be in general release, but with a part missing.  The structure of this recent work by one of Hollywood’s favorite actors, under the direction of Stephen Gaghan, recounts a series of parallel stories that alternate scenes through the film.  One of these stories is that of Wassim, a young Pakistani laborer, who lives and works in an unspecified oil-rich country of the Persian Gulf.  The young man, after having been approached by a terrorist, becomes a suicide bomber.  But terrorism is not the issue that did not go down well with the United Arab Emirates censor.  Rather what bothered him was Wassim’s living conditions.  The young man, with his father, represents all those migrants from the far east who labor in the wealthiest of the oil monarchies for the enrichment of their employers.  They live with horrible living conditions, starvation wages, inhuman working hours, and, as one of the film’s scenes shows, beatings and violence at the hands of the police if they try to protest.
The major non-governmental human rights organizations, especially Human Rights Watch, have for years been decrying the conditions of foreign workers in countries like the United Arab Emirates, describing them as modern forms of slavery.  “Dubai is experiencing an economic boom without precedent,” Sarah Keah Whitson,  Middle East specialist for the HRW, explained some time ago, “but the boom has arrived on the backs of foreign workers, who are not treated like human beings.”

On top of a powder keg
It is easy to imagine the risk of “self-identification” that the film contains.  Those foreign workers in the Emirates who can see the film may find in Wassim’s story a reproduction of their own lives and perhaps feel motivated to some form of rebellion.   Recently, the risk became even greater.  
    About a month ago, for the first time in the history of the United Arab Emirates, foreigners—men working on the construction of what is planned to be the highest building in the world—went on strike.   Such an action was so unheard-of that the government, after an initial attempt to use force to compel the strikers to return to work, changed tactics and decided to use a two-pronged approach.  Half of the entire population of Dubai consists of foreign workers.  Coming from every country of the far east, they are a diverse lot, but suffer in common from exploitation and terrible living conditions.  Just a few hours, in fact, after the initial small group began their action, almost four thousand migrant workers had linked arms with the strikers.   The strike revealed the potential for devastation for both economy and civil society in the Emirates.  The government took action, sitting down at the table to bargain with the workers and promising a series of reforms of the laws affecting foreign laborers.  The workers’ demands include formation of an association to safeguard their rights and defend their interests.  For the time being, the bargaining talks are proceeding and the strikers have returned to work.  
    The images of Wassim could become a new detonator of the discontent pervading the foreign worker community, and the government therefore decided to censor Syriana—at least some of it—partly  for this reason.  However, after this major strike, the workers are aware that they have a weapon to use in the battle against the exploitation they are subjected to.  Censorship will not be enough to stop them.