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Abdul Rahman Saeed, Staff Reporter

The Ministry of Interior has stressed the need for everybody to respect the law on social networking sites. A number of community members, including Emiratis and UAE Arab and foreign residents disregard social values and generally accepted public morals on social networking sites by exchanging offensive messages, phrases, comments, video clips and pictures, it said.

This holds offenders legally accountable for insult and defamation, it added, noting that the UAE law does not exempt them from punishment, even if the offence is done as a joke. The ministry explained that during the past years, many people in the UAE had been interrogated and prosecuted for describing others on social media with offensive words and publishing video clips as a joke.

These are crimes punishable by the UAE law, not to mention that they are behaviours that do not reflect the values of tolerance that the society was raised on, it said. Although some offenders showed their good intentions, pleading that their offence was unintentional and did not involve an actual desire to belittle others, the authorities concerned did not exempt them from legal accountability and the courts punished them under the articles of the IT law with fines and jail terms, it added.

According to Brigadier General Dr. Abdullah Rashid Al Shamsi, Director of Law Respect Culture Office of the General Directorate of Community Protection and Crime Prevention at the Ministry of Interior, offices done individuals against others on social networking sites are considered as IT crimes that are punishable by the law. Some social media users were subject to legal accountability for posting humorous videos, publishing sarcastic comments and exchanging phrases that fall under defamation, though they said they did not mean any offence and were unaware that what they did was punishable by the law, he said.

However, ignorance of the law does not exempt offenders from accountability, he added, noting that some individuals might not realize that sending a word or a video clip through groups of friends on any social networking programmes might cause them to enter a punitive and correctional facility. Dr. Youssef Al Sharifi, a legal advisor, explained that electronic defamation crimes occur during daily transactions and are committed by individual without knowing that they are criminal.

A person may depict himself in a certain position as a joke or out of his sense of humor but discovers later that his act is criminal, he said. Similarly, a certain situation on social media may cause you to be so angry that you and to respond inappropriately so that you turn into a guilty person and subject to punishment, he added.

Offences on social media are considered as a crime under article 43 of the rumours and cybercrimes law, he said, noting that a jail term and fine of no less than Dhs250,000 and no more than Dhs500,000 - or one of these two penalties - will be imposed on whoever insults another or attributes an incident to him that would make him a subject of punishment or contempt by others.