In a country where a vacationing woman was thrown in jail for two months for drugs after being given an injection by a doctor at a Dubai hospital and another couple spent three months in prison for allegedly having sex on the beach it’s amazing that anyone would show up for a protest. But surfers in Dubai did just that on March 29, 2009 after a swimmer died Friday on Sunset Beach near the world famous Burj Al Arab hotel, according to a story in The National.
The municipality argues that surfers are a hazard to swimmers, but defenders of the sport claim they actually save lives, and that Friday’s tragedy illustrates their point. . . “There would have been surfers to pull out the person who drowned as we often do, but we were just too afraid to turn up, not knowing what to expect from the police and municipality,” said Danny Van Doreen, of Surf Dubai.
Surfers have been ticketed not just for surfing, but also for having surfboards on the beach or in their cars. The surfers say the beaches that have been closed to surfers are the only beaches which “benefit from swells generated by winds blowing down the Gulf,” and they have no place else to go.
We wish them luck.
[Link: The National]
