Louvre museum, workers abused in Abu Dhabi

This video says about itself:

The Dirty Secret Behind the NYU, Louvre, Guggenheim Projects in Abu Dhabi

(New York, February 10, 2015) – Serious concerns about workers’ rights have not been resolved for a high-profile project in Abu Dhabi that will host branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums and a campus of New York University (NYU). These institutions should make their continued engagement with the Saadiyat Island project contingent on the developers’ commitment to more serious enforcement of worker protections and the compensation of workers who suffered abuses, including those arbitrarily deported after they went on strike.

If the United Arab Emirates, including Abu Dhabi, would not participate in the Saudi absolute monarchy’s genocidal war against the people of Yemen, as they do now: then the money for that bloodshed and torture might instead have been spent on wages and working conditions worthy of human beings for the workers building the Louvre museum and other construction in Abu Dhabi.

If the Abu Dhabi government really likes art, then they should not ban books by Tunisian authors about dictatorship and opposition to it in Tunisia (not in Abu Dhabi, but absolute monarchs are afraid of people seeing parallels). They should not ban George Orwell’s 1984 like they do now. They should not ban the Harry Potter books like they do now.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

The French President Emmanuel Macron opens this week in the United Arab Emirates one of the world’s most spectacular museums: the Louvre Abu Dhabi. …

Van Gogh, Renoir, Mondriaan and Monet are featured.

According to a former landlady of Vincent van Gogh, the artist cried night after night about how the bosses treated workers. What a clear sign (though impossible according to the laws of nature) would it be, if Van Gogh’s paintings (sold for so many millions of dollars after their maker had died in poverty) now in the Abu Dhabi museum would start crying about how the absolute monarchy and bosses in Abu Dhabi treat workers.

Bronze and porcelain from all corners of the world are exhibited. A sarcophagus from ancient Egypt is a showpiece, as well as a great contemporary work by Ai Wei Wei. …

Ai Wei Wei fights for the human rights of refugees. While the UAE regime makes more and more human beings into refugees by participating in the Saudi war on Yemen.

The cost of construction was initially estimated at 83 million euros. According to the latest estimates, the bill is 561 million euros: almost 7 times as much.

And that is only for the empty building. …

In the French press, the Louvre Abu Dhabi has already been depicted as a megalomaniac project. …

“Art is not merchandise and does not belong in an amusement park”, wrote a prominent Parisian director of museums some time ago in Le Monde. She qualified the Louvre Abu Dhabi sarcastically as ‘Las Vegas on a sandy plain’.