Manchester City’s top-of-the-table Premier League encounter with Liverpool was the subject of an aerial protest on Saturday, with a banner flown over the Etihad Stadium calling for the release of an activist from prison in Abu Dhabi.
The banner, trailed by a chartered plane, read: “UAE: Free Ahmed Mansoor!” Mansoor is a poet and blogger who has been imprisoned since 2017 after a court in the United Arab Emirates found him guilty of “insulting the status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols” and “publishing false information to damage the UAE’s reputation abroad”.
The banner is part of a campaign by Amnesty International to raise awareness of Mansoor’s plight and to persuade Manchester City fans to call for his release. According to Amnesty, Mansoor is in isolation, is required to sleep on the floor, has no access to books, TV, radio, pens or paper, and is allowed outside his cell only three times a week.
City are ultimately owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family. The chief executive of Amnesty UK, Sacha Deshmukh, said fans could help influence a change of heart on Mansoor’s incarceration.
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“The UAE has been sportswashing its global reputation through Manchester City while at the same time jailing Ahmed Mansoor and others simply for their peaceful human rights activism,” Deshmukh said. “Man City’s amazing success under Pep Guardiola owes a great deal to Emirati funding, and we’re calling on City fans to join us in this campaign to free Ahmed. Today’s plane stunt is a way of saying: ‘Look up from the pitch and see the bigger picture – a huge injustice has occurred, and the owners of Man City are the ones who can right this wrong.’”
With awareness and criticism of sportswashing having polarised the fanbases of some clubs, including those of the Saudi Arabia-owned Newcastle United, Amnesty’s use of positive language regarding City’s on-field performance may signal a new approach to engagement from human rights organisations.
Alongside the banner, messages calling for Mansoor to be freed were placed in the City club shop and a banner was raised outside the ground.
A second banner was also flown over the Etihad carrying a message from Everton fans following their 10-point Premier League deduction for falling foul of the league’s profitability and sustainability rules. The message read: “Premier League = corrupt. #UTFT #EFC”. Neither of the protest banners were referred to in Sky Sports’ TV coverage.
