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refused to have anything to do with a museum built by workers treated so poorly. “Artists
should not be asked to exhibit their work in buildings built on the backs of exploited work-
ers. Those working with bricks and mortar deserve the same kind of respect as those work-
ing with cameras and brushes.”
The UAE's deplorable labor record was finally raised as a matter of public debate
through the intervention of artists. The list includes Janet Cardiff, Thomas Hirschhorn,
Mona Hatoum, Krysztof Wodiczko and Harun Farocki.
The artists have demanded that Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development & Investment
Company enforce rules that forbid the huge fees that workers pay recruiters before they
arrive in the UAE. Their petition also asks that workers be given the right to demand bet-
ter and safer working and living conditions. Slowly, the UAE and the Guggenheim have
acceded to the demands, beginning with hiring an independent monitor to insure that
workers weren't paying onerous recruitment fees. And while the artists are serious, their
boycott does not threaten the final outcome.
The effort will improve the lives of the workers on the tourist project, but it has had
darker consequences as well. At roughly the same time, Abu Dhabi signed a contract with
a private American firm to create an elite battalion of foreign mercenaries. The contract
specifies that these foreign soldiers and police are to be trained in crowd control to put
down labor unrest or any other form of protest by unarmed civilians. The wave of civilian
political revolts against authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and nearby
Bahrain during the Arab Spring apparently made the rulers of Abu Dhabi nervous.
• • •
In the middle of a multibillion-dollar building campaign, with a calendar filled with fest-
ivals headlined by world-class sports car drivers and hot entertainers like the Jonas Broth-
ers and Prince, the government of Abu Dhabi decided it was time to host its first Green
Tourism conference in November 2010. “Green” has become an essential part of every
national tourist campaign. I was invited to speak on the keynote panel.
We gathered at the new conference center and were ushered to a private majlis, or
audience, with Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism
Authority and singular sponsor of the three-day event. True to Middle Eastern custom, the
room was one oblong of generous chairs arranged to allow everyone to enter, acknowledge
each other and then sit for desultory conversation. The sheikh was the last to arrive and
he took the empty chair waiting near us. When it was my turn to speak, I asked: “What
inspired you to hold a green conference for Abu Dhabi tourism?”
With utter charm, the sultan looked around at his senior aides and asked, “Why? Why
not?” We all laughed and it was time to open the conference. Richard Quest, the CNN
anchor, was the master of ceremonies and said this was “the first time such a conference
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