#dance bar dubai

[blingdubai]

When it comes to dance bars in Dubai, Bling stands in a league of its own.

[clubbingdubai]

The Fusion of Dance and Fun Entertainment

Explore Dubai’s top dance bars with immersive experiences that combine luxury, cutting-edge technology, and high-energy entertainment. Discover the ultimate venues for aunique and captivating night out.

[letspartydubai]

Discover the Ultimate VIP Experience at Dance Bars in Dubai

Experience the ultimate night out with VIP services at dance bars in Dubai. Enjoy priority access, personalized service, and exclusive perks with Lets Party Dubai. Book now for an unforgettable evening!

[crosby-interesting]

i love ur blog so much. u allow truth. sadly it seems these days on gossip blogs u aren’t allowed to reveal facts, decipher lies, or knock down the white picket fence of perfection without being accused of being misogynistic. Since when did women holding other women accountable become misogynistic? Since when did exposing male cheaters who have sex with random women from restaurants, hotels, & clubs while they have pregnant girlfriends, wives, children, & dog moms waiting at home become misogynistic? Since when did exposing escorts & prostitution services that essentially promote human trafficking become misogynistic? As a feminist i believe the word “misogynistic” is sadly being diluted & loosing value, bc people carelessly throw it around to defend against any negative accusations surrounding women who’re linked to players they admire. I like this player so u aren’t allowed to call out him or his woman’s bullshit & if u do then ur misogynistic. U discuss Auston Mathews having TWO former prostitute girlfriends & CURRENT ex prostitute gf Megan Turner? ur misogynistic. U discuss Adam larsson cheating with girls the past THREE years on Vera soderberg while he’s away traveling for games? ur misogynistic. U discuss Lauren Kyle ignoring video evidence of Connor Mcdavid cheating with a college girl & accepting the public humiliation of the the scandal just accepting an “Im sorry” engagement a year later? ur misogynistic. U discuss Nico Hischier & Timo Meier hiring a spain prostitute to spend 3 days with them on a yacht LAST WEEK & following her on IG while she has pictures for the prices of lap dance, private dance, & “extra services” on her IG highlights? ur misogynistic. U discuss Elias Pettersson prostitute call girl -girlfriend Katelyn Byrd exposed on surveillance video kissing & being fondled by married musician Alex Pall, then his wife crying on IG stories after exposing the affair while Katelyn is getting her paparazzi pics with Alex outside of Nobu a week after the scandal? ur misogynistic. U discuss Katelyns other scandal of the ex sugar daddy FIANCÉ who publicly accused her of secretly taking large sums of money out of his accounts after he had already bought her FAMILY a house & discovered she was cheating on him with a younger man? ur misogynistic. U discuss Kasperi Kapanen intentionally make Dubai prostitute Matleena Laakso his girlfriend, so he can finally cheat with peace & understanding? ur misogynistic. U discuss Penny Liarakos cheating on William Nylander at the start of their ex relationship & running secret puck bunny tumblrs with her best friend & currently leaving Willy weird comments using fake accounts on IG? ur misogynistic. U discuss Mathew Tkachuk being given an ultimatum and forced by Papa Kieth to prospose to the blonde( who he unfortunately is just not that into) on the back of a fishing boat in an old t shirt & swim shorts while she’s wearing a white bridal shower dress bc she was actually involved in Papa Kieths plan, & Papa set up the whole proposal himself at 9am on a random Thursday because Papa was tired of Matt cheating with the mixed girls & latinas from the Miami bars? ur misogynistic. U discus Kathy Leutner working for a man who provided prostitution services & has victims accusing him of trying to recruit them into prostitution? ur misogynistic. U discuss Sidney Crosby's public humiliation ritual fcked up relationship? ur misogynistic.- Let’s be honest girls, none of those discussions are misogynistic no matter how much the truth hurts, as much as you want to deny it pls stop mislabeling facts as misogyny.If u can’t face the truth ur lucky enough to have the option of logging out & going back to living ur delusions of grandeur & perfection. Holding women accountable for their actions or lack there of is not misogynistic & calling out their male partners deceptions is definitely not misogynistic . I will be gathering any info of the NHL prostitution /cheating circus & sending it in. im tired of the bullshit.

-🇲🇽

This all sounds like a blessing! Thank you!

[byooregard]

iwtv fanfic Friday: devils minion era (or close enough)

on display by thisisthefamilybuisness aka @officialclaricestarling; E, 3k.

Armand leans back in her chair and smirks. “There’s nobody here to notice if you absolutely must rut yourself against the seam of your slacks, Daniel; this is a private dining room. Given the sorry state of your thoughts, though, perhaps you’d prefer if I took a seat at the bar and sat you in my lap instead. It would only be fair, of course, every patron deserves a chance to see why I spend millions of dollars and so much of my time indulging you.”

i know a place we can go luminoussbeings aka @gaysie; M, 3k.

“—come out with me,” Daniel’s saying, and Armand blinks. “I know a place—better than this one, I’m telling you. Okay, fine, the drinks are terrible, but if you want to go out dancing—you’ll see. You’ll love it. Guarantee ya.” He smiles winningly, holds out his hand. No, Armand thinks. or: Daniel sees Armand with blood on his face from a kill, thinks he's just some poor abused twink, and decides he needs to show him a good time

cranefucker island circa ‘82 by katplanet; E, 22k

“You doing all right?” Daniel asks him. Armand blinks. “No,” he says. “Most honest you've been with me since I got here,” Daniel says. And then, because it seems like the thing to do, “I can clear out, if you need the place to yourself.” “Whatever you prefer.” Armand's lips look chapped. Dehydration? He ate the kid with the sunglasses, but the smear he left took a lot of bleach to scrub away. Maybe Daniel should - “You won't be harmed,” Armand says, “regardless of your decision.” “You got served divorce papers so hard it left a crater,” Daniel says, “and you're still poking around in people's heads.”

little kidnaps in the dark | End OTW Racism by gaypiratedivorce; M, 150k

The first memory is only the first memory, the first crack —after the dam finally breaks, Daniel tries to make sense of the past unraveling itself in his mind. While continuing to thread the story of Louis's life, he attempts to untangle the questions of his own. But Armand offers no answers, and Louis gives him no straightforward ones. As their histories weave together and the line between journalism and personal chronicle disappears from sight, Daniel struggles to figure out who they were then, what they've become, and why exactly he's been summoned to Dubai.

it's a rollercoaster kinda rush by exastris_scientia aka @keepoffthetardis; E, 5k

He writes more over the next three months than he has in the last year, and he even gets paid for some of it. Not as much as before, but, y’know. He can keep his apartment, so it’s not like he’s complaining. He goes to bed early, gets up late, and actually learns how to cook something edible for once in his life. He’s not even using. It’s normal. It sucks so bad and he’s so fucking lonely. Daniel gets fired from the San Francisco Chronicle and discovers all roads lead not to Rome, but to Armand.

couldn't trust myself to proceed with caution by extrasis_scientia aka @keepoffthetardis; E, 6k.

When he opens the door, Daniel looks up from his drink. Almost every feature on his face has been changed by the twenty years between them and their last goodbye. Every one, that is, except for his eyes. They’re shielded by handsome-looking wire-frame glasses now, but they’re still as blue and sharp as they were the night they met. Their eyes lock, and Armand is astonished to discover all at once that he’s still angry. “You must be Mr. Molloy,” he manages through lips nearly numb. As if he feels nothing at all, Daniel holds out a hand. “Mr. Molloy’s my father. Call me Daniel.” Armand seeks Daniel out in 2003 and gets quite a bit more than he bargained for.

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

*face smacks into the windows, cracks appear in the glass*

can I please hear about ‘jamie’s autism crisis’ and/or ‘through the desert repenting’?

💚🌹💚🌹💚

I answered one for Jamie's Autism Crisis here, so this one's for Through the Desert Repenting! The premise is that Sam decides to be more proactive about his social advocacy post-Dubai Air and, in campaigning to get the charity gala changed to something less creepy, sends Jamie into a bit of a spiral by talking to everyone about consent and bodily autonomy because he not only hasn't processed the Amsterdam of it all, but is also having some weird feelings about his time on Lust Conquers All. It features Sam and Jamie slow-burn friendship, plus Jan Maas as Sam's first recruit to his anti-charity gala efforts.

I have a bit of it written (because I intended to work on TtDR and Wrong Answers Only concurrently, but it turns out I'm really bad at working on more than one fic at a time), so here's a snippet:

He’d gone out with the lads, three nights ago, shirt shimmery blue and unbuttoned nearly to the navel to distract from the way he kept his arms covered past the wrists even in the muggy summer heat. Not like it mattered much anyway; he’d posted up at the bar inching his way through his vanilla vodka while his teammates danced and drank and enjoyed themselves the way Jamie couldn’t seem to fucking manage, these days. But he was still young, and fit, and a famous footballer, and so it didn’t take long for a woman to drop into the seat beside him, maybe a decade his senior with sleek dark hair pulled back in a bun and deep red lipstick and a black blazer open over a black shirt, formal like she’d come directly from work. She held out her hand to shake and said, “Jamie, my name is Molly.” Business-like, not pretending she didn’t know who he was like people sometimes did. “Hey,” he said. Considered telling her to piss off but company might be nice, actually, if only to keep him from spending another night in the empty cavern of his house. Maybe they could go to hers. Stay the night, shower together in the morning. If dad asked where he’d been... well, dad liked when he did shit like that. Proved he was a man. She leaned forward on her elbows. Smiled up at him like they were sharing some great secret. She said, “Jamie, I’m a producer on Lust Conquers All.”

[callmewrinkles3]

Deuxmoi, October 2018 - March 2023

October 2018

Spotted: This curly haired driver was trying to be discreet in Austin but failed miserably. It might have worked if he didn’t have a bright pink cowboy hat on. I hope the brunette who gave it to him knows the cowboy hat rule!

April 2019 

Spotted: Could have sworn I saw Daniel Ricciardo at Coachella weekend two with a short brunette. When I looked again I wasn’t sure, but they were making out and happy.

August 2019

Spotted: The breakout Netflix driver on a family Disney trip. His “friend” according to the show had his nephew on her hip, and they all had matching mouse ears. He couldn’t stop putting an arm around her shoulder or having his hand at her back. Too cute.

Spotted: First time submission and it’s a Big One. In a dive bar in Vegas and Daniel Ricciardo walked in with his girlfriend/assistant/whatever she is but she’s cute. Took a booth at the back and they ordered beers and shots, flirting constantly. Once the dancing started they were on the floor and his hands were ALL OVER HER. Got a sneaky photo too.

April 2020

Spotted: Was at an Optus event before the now cancelled Australian Grand Prix (sadness) and Daniel Ricciardo was guest of honour. The brunette he’s always photographed with was there too, they are NOT just friends. His hand was around her waist and he was making sure her drink was always full. Plus I spotted her talking with some of the bigwigs from Optus, Daniel was watching her with heart eyes all the time.

August 2020

Name: Francophone 

Email: neverorange@gmail.com 

Subject: Breaking the rules? 

Message: Ever since this paddock playboy joined his latest team he’s had a pass available for his alleged best friend. Thanks to the pandemic rules it’s staff only, and she’s been upgraded to assistant. Seems like a way to get his fuckbuddy to work with him. 

June 2021

Name: Mediterranean Marvel

Email: yachtgirls@gmail.com

Subject: Unexpected attendee

Message: Walking past the marina in Monaco and spotted Charles LeClerc and Daniel Ricciardo on Charles’ yacht. Charles girlfriend was there, Ricciardo had his arm around a tattooed brunette in a skimpy bikini. Didn’t get a good look at her, but I don’t think it was the girl he’s seen with at races! New girlfriend?

December 2021

Name: Desert Diva

Email: loungesonly@fakeemail.com

Subject: Heartbreak

Message: In the lounge in Dubai and spotted Daniel Ricciardo saying goodbye to his girlfriend while they were both crying. His friends gave her hugs too, and everyone looked miserable. She managed to hold it together mostly until he left, but we were on the same plane and she was crying most of the flight. His insta looks like he’s back in Australia and quarantining, guess the wedding rumours aren’t true. She was so sweet to the staff, apologising for being a mess. That rumour that she’s a cheater is a lie, those two are too cute.

June 2022

Spotted: Walking around Perth Zoo for the weekend and who do I see but hometown hero Daniel Ricciardo. Didn’t take photos cause he was there with family, it looked like his girlfriend and his niece and nephew. I see why his girlfriend’s been MIA recently, she looked pretty ill. They were adorable though, his niece kept holding her hand and asking to be carried whenever we walked past them. Glad to see them together and happy, hopefully his performance improves.

October 2022

Spotted: I just saw Daniel Ricciardo and his girlfriend in the Target in Wooten, Austin. Bought groceries and sheets? No idea.

March 2023

Name: It’s fucking orange

Email: givesyouwings@email.com

Subject: Disgustingly cute

Message: Daniel Ricciardo and Scotty James’ fiancées were both at Eras Tour night one in Vegas. Wearing costumes and singing/yelling along. The two of them had all the words to All Too Well, and I think Em was FaceTiming Daniel during Our Song.

[ancientgoddessofegypt]

PICK A CARD : Beautiful Aesthetic - What you need most right now.

Join me on this pick a card reading.

Choose which scenery you feel a connection to the most and you will find out what you need the most at this time!

PILE ONE

What you need most is a bit of outdoor activity. Trying hiking. Going out to a local gym, a bar for a drink. Go out on a night of laughter, dancing, and fun! For this group, a romantic partner is coming forth in this new era of your life.

PILE TWO

Museums. Exploring the hidden gems of your city will do it for you. Artistic values are higher with this group. You need something colorful and profound for you to take inspiration from. An ideal space for you is somewhere jazzy. A lounge area where you can sit to the side and read your book, look at the beautiful view etc. Somewhere quiet, so you can hear your thoughts! Try going out to certain places solo, this works for you along the way.

PILE THREE

You guys need to travel. Going out and connecting to different cultures is what you need the most. Buy that plane ticket, go to dubai, take a trip to hawaii. Just go! Be spontaneous. Learn a new language, something new about the country your in. Just relax!

[indyflanery]

tag your vibe: queer fiction

REPOST, DO NOT REBLOG

Bold what applies, italicize what sometimes does

the priory of the orange tree: romantic-era piano music where notes fall like tinkling glass. laced corsets and ink-stained fingers, walks in rose gardens and delicate mouthfuls of fruit. dragon-patterned day dresses. perfectionism, and the gradual unlearning of it. “the orange” by wendy cope. a reflection in the polished blade of a sword. happiness so fleeting it feels like glass. watching milk unfurl in a cup of black tea. precise steps, pristine words chosen carefully. a life in your grasp you once never even dared dream of.

red, white, and royal blue: working on a project you’re passionate about. the pulsing bass line of music spilling from an open window. never quite feeling like you’re good enough. never quite knowing when to stop. fireworks on new year’s eve. the energy of organizing and protesting and wringing change from the world. “the hill we climb” by amanda gorman. murals sprawling on brick walls and city blocks. dreams of tokyo, dubai, rio, paris. speeding down a highway as dusk darkens to night, sunroof open, ice rattling in the drink in the cupholder.

carry on: the long and languid days of summer. comfort in a childhood book series, tv show, comic strip. making your older sister laugh. colorful embroidery, scribbled notes in geography textbooks, extra sugar in lemonade. an odd nostalgia for something you never had. well-worn jeans and roads and recipe books. the cheese pull on that first forkful of oven-baked mac ‘n cheese. walking barefoot down a sidewalk covered in pink chalk. wanting desperately to be happy.

we set the dark on fire: the hypnotic stare of embers waiting to burst into flame. cupping rich, dark earth in your palms and letting it crumble through. violets in dead grass. standing on the precipice of living for the first time. the opening bar of your favorite song, the reverb of a gunshot in fog. dancing for the sheer joy of moving your body. the rasp in your throat from running too far, too fast, too soon. lightning storms at sunrise, the sky bleeding red as rain pounds in torrents. the burn of newfound pride in your history, culture, family, identity.

a gentleman’s guide to vice & virtue: the undercurrent of meaning in a piece of literature you can’t quite grasp. one or two dearly cherished friends. peeling gold filigree and distant chamber music. shying away from anything that could hurt you in hopes that something in you will heal. sea shanties in lilting accents and gravelly voices. muddy riding boots, curling eyelashes, windswept skies. unexpected thoughtful gifts. the satisfying click of a lock. thinking about running away, changing your life; never quite brave enough to do it.

[coochiequeens]

The UAE…. Where rape victims can jailed for having sex outside of marriage but the authorities look the way when African women are forced into prostitution. But it’s ok with authorities because as long as the foreign male population has a foreign female population to exploit the local women won’t be harassed.

African women trafficked into the UAE are forced into debt and subjected to threats and violence, as they are kept in sexual slavery. The case of Christy Gold, who has been charged with sex trafficking in Nigeria, highlights the torment endured by these women in the UAE.

By MAGGIE MICHAEL 

Filed June 12, 2023, 11 a.m. GMT

On a pleasure boat cruising Gulf waters near Dubai’s glittering skyline, a Nigerian woman in a white dress and gold jewelry nodded and swayed as a gathering sang “Happy Birthday” to her.

Videos of Christy Gold’s 45th birthday party were posted in May last year on an Instagram account that showcases her glamorous lifestyle, months after Gold fled Nigeria, where she was facing sex trafficking charges.

Gold – whose name appears in court records as Christiana Jacob Uadiale – was a ringleader in a criminal network that lured African women to Dubai and forced them into prostitution in brothels, backstreets, bars, hotels and dance clubs, according to six Nigerian government anti-trafficking officials, a British human rights activist who has tracked her operation and five women who say they were trafficked and exploited by her.

Three of the women said in interviews that Gold told them that if they didn’t do as they were told, they’d be killed and dumped in the desert. Those who didn’t make enough money for her were taken to a room in an apartment in Dubai, where Gold’s brother starved them, flogged them and shoved hot chili paste into their vaginas, according to three anti-trafficking officials and five women who provided detailed accounts in interviews and court statements.

“They beat the hell out of me,” one of the women said. “The suffering was too much.”

In a statement to the court after she was charged, Gold denied that she and her brother were sex traffickers. “I am not involved in human trafficking and I do not have any girls in Dubai working for me as a prostitute,” she said.

Gold remains a fugitive from justice – part of what anti-trafficking activists and officials say is a thriving underground of suspected Nigerian sex traffickers who have taken refuge in the United Arab Emirates, a Gulf nation known for its wealth, futuristic skyscrapers and what rights groups say is a poor record on protecting foreign workers and basic freedoms.

The UAE is a major destination for sex trafficking, where African women are forced into prostitution by illicit networks operating within the country, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Reuters has found.

Emirati authorities do little to protect these women, according to anti-trafficking activists, Nigerian authorities and interviews with trafficked women.

This story is based on interviews with 25 African women, mostly from Nigeria, who described being lured to the UAE by Gold or other alleged traffickers, as well as dozens of interviews with humanitarian workers, investigators, Nigerian government officials and others with knowledge of sex trafficking in the Emirates. Their accounts are corroborated by court records and case files from Nigeria’s anti-human trafficking agency.

Human traffickers keep African women in sexual slavery by playing on their financial desperation and creating webs of manipulation and coercion, the reporting shows. They subject them to threats and violence. They ensnare them in crushing debts, often totaling $10,000 to $15,000 – huge sums for women from poor families. And, in many cases, they exploit traditional African spiritual beliefs to make victims believe that they have no choice but to do what the traffickers tell them.

This article is part of a reporting collaboration led by ICIJ, Trafficking Inc., which is examining sex trafficking and labor trafficking in many parts of the globe. ICIJ’s media partners on the project include Reuters, NBC News, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and other news outlets in multiple countries.

Gold did not respond to questions for this story. In her statement to the court in Nigeria, Gold said she had helped Nigerian women and men move to the UAE by subletting space to them in an apartment she owned in Dubai.

“I even go as far as advising them like a mother so they too can make it in Dubai,” she said. But she told the court, “I cannot tell what these people did for a living in Dubai.”

In a written reply supplied by the Dubai government’s media affairs office, the emirate’s police agency said claims that Gold had engaged in the sex trafficking of African women in Dubai are “false and have absolutely no basis in fact.” The statement said Gold had “entered and exited Dubai legally and was not implicated in any illegal activities.”

The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said any suggestion the UAE “tolerates human trafficking or that it has little regard to the victims of this heinous crime is utterly false.” Such allegations, the ministry said in response to questions, were “baseless and without foundation.”

The ministry said the UAE’s laws on sex trafficking carry heavy fines and prison sentences. A report the ministry shared said the UAE had referred 20 “human trafficking cases” to the courts in 2021, most for “sexual exploitation.”

The UAE has been involved in international police operations against trafficking networks, the ministry said.

Human rights activists and Nigerian authorities say the UAE doesn’t live up to its anti-trafficking commitments.

Fatima Waziri-Azi, director general of Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, said there has been “no cooperation” when NAPTIP has reached out to Emirati authorities for help hunting down traffickers working out of the UAE.

Angus Thomas, a British activist who founded an anti-trafficking education organization based in Ghana, said UAE authorities, including the police, were uncooperative when he urged them to help African women get away from Gold and her associates.

“I wrote, I phoned, I emailed, asking them to help me get the girls, sending addresses of apartments,” he said. “And I heard nothing.”

In plain sight

Sex trafficking is one form of human trafficking, which is generally defined as using force, fraud or coercion to induce someone to provide a service.

Most of the 25 women interviewed for this story said they were promised other types of work but were driven into prostitution. Others said they chose to do sex work but were trapped in situations in which they were abused, their earnings were stolen and they were unable to get away.

The UAE made sex trafficking a crime in 2006 and has established an interagency anti-trafficking panel and opened shelters for survivors. The U.S. State Department said in 2022 that the UAE has made “significant efforts” to combat human trafficking but still falls short in key areas – including failing to “consistently screen vulnerable populations for trafficking indicators, which may have penalized some victims for unlawful acts traffickers compelled them to commit, such as immigration or ‘prostitution’ violations.”

The UAE follows Islamic law, yet prostitution and sex trafficking are open secrets. Business cards with photos and WhatsApp numbers for brothels disguised as massage parlors litter many areas of Dubai. Spas, dance clubs and bars are filled with sex workers.

A hierarchy based on skin tone plays an important role in the UAE’s sex industry, according to interviews with trafficked women and visits to spots where prostitutes congregate in the UAE. Lighter-skinned women from Europe are generally trafficked into higher-end venues serving wealthier customers. Darker-skinned women are often steered to alleys and street corners, providing sex to low-income migrant workers from South Asia and Africa.

One Nigerian woman described being taken by a trafficker to an open-air brothel in the desert between Dubai and another emirate, Abu Dhabi. She said she and other women would take off their clothes and spread them on the ground, and men would come to have sex with them from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.

A Nigerian mother in her 20s said a trafficker led her and two other women to a parking lot in Ajman, one of the emirates that make up the UAE, and forced them to have sex with male clients amid vehicles that were being painted and repaired. At the end of the night, she said, the traffickers took all the money, leaving them with nothing to buy food.

After she broke free of the trafficker, the woman said, she slept in the streets and begged for food. She nearly lost her mind, she said, before a nurse from Nigeria rescued her and helped her get home.

The UAE's sex industry is shaped by the country's distinctive demography and economy.

Nearly 90% of its population comes from somewhere else – mostly foreign workers employed in construction, hospitality and other industries. Most of them are men and they arrive alone. As a result, 69% of the UAE’s population is male. The government deals with these demographic realities by deploying extensive surveillance in the UAE – and by allowing a bustling sex trade as a way of pacifying male workers, according to two former diplomats who were based in the UAE and monitored sex trafficking.

Gold and Mercy

On New Year’s Eve 2019, Thomas, a photographer and anti-trafficking activist, had a one-day layover in the UAE before heading home to London. He was going into a supermarket in Dubai when a 19-year-old Nigerian woman approached him and offered him sex.

He declined, but asked her if she wanted to return to her home country.

She told him, Thomas said, that she and 22 other women were under the control of a trafficker named Christy Gold. Back in London, he sent her money to rent a safe place to stay and then arranged a flight home to Nigeria.

Thomas said he began trying to rescue other women trapped in Dubai. He started a campaign called Send Them Home, raising money to cover victims’ escape and travel costs. Over several months, Thomas said, he helped rescue eight other women who said they’d been held against their will by Gold or other traffickers operating in the UAE. Thomas’ account was confirmed by Nigerian anti-trafficking officials and women who Thomas helped escape from traffickers.

He also shared information that he had gathered about Gold with Nigeria’s anti-trafficking agency NAPTIP, which can arrest and prosecute alleged traffickers. His efforts included tracking Gold’s Instagram account, where she displays hundreds of online posts featuring lion-shaped gold pendants and other jewelry she sells through a gold trading business she runs from Dubai.

In a May 2022 email to Waziri-Azi, the Nigerian anti-trafficking agency’s director, Thomas wrote that Gold was “flaunting her wealth built on the backs” of young women “she trafficks to Dubai.”

Little is known about Gold’s background. In her written statement to the Nigerian court, Gold said that she traveled to Dubai in 2009 and after that began shuttling back and forth, buying gold, shoes and handbags in the UAE and selling them in Nigeria.

According to victim statements to the court and interviews, Gold and her associates targeted Nigerian women who were desperate for work and new lives, promising them jobs in hair salons, restaurants and other retail businesses in Dubai. Gold’s associates helped them obtain Nigerian passports and tourist visas to travel to the UAE.

Descriptions of her operations come from five women who said they’d been trafficked by Gold. Three gave detailed interviews. Two of the three women interviewed for this story, along with two other women, have submitted witness statements in Gold’s criminal case.

Each of the three women interviewed for this article said she was trafficked after being approached by a recruiter, Mercy Ewere Owuzo, who worked with Gold.

One said she was working in a shop in Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, in July 2019 when Owuzo told her that she could make much more money as a salesperson in a store in Dubai.

“I didn’t ask any questions because she told me she is trying to help young women and I thought, ‘She is a kind person,’” the woman, 25, recalled.

She said Owuzo paid for her passport, plane ticket and UAE tourist visa.

After arriving in Dubai, she said, she talked by phone to Owuzo, who told her there was no job for her in a store. Instead, she would be going to clubs, restaurants and hotels to sell her body. It was the only way, she said she was told, to pay down the $12,000 debt that she owed Gold for bringing her to the UAE.

The three women said Gold also controlled them by confiscating their passports. Then, they said, she created fake passports that appeared authentic enough to get them through routine police stops or past front desks at hotels – but not enough to get them out of the country.

It’s not clear from witness accounts and court documents whether Gold was the topmost leader of the alleged trafficking network. The three women interviewed for this story said she exercised a substantial level of authority and was deeply engaged in the network’s operations – personally threatening, for example, to leave their corpses in the Arabian Desert if they didn’t comply with her demands.

“Every time we don’t bring money, they would beat us, put pepper in our vagina, pepper in our eyes,” said one of the three women, who said she was working as a hairstylist in Nigeria before Owuzo promised her a better-paying job in Dubai. “Many of us had wounds, but we weren’t taken to hospitals because they don’t want people to know what they were doing to us.”

All three of these women spent time in a two-bedroom apartment in Dubai controlled by Gold. At one point, they said, Gold occupied one bedroom, while as many as 18 women were crammed into the other, with most sleeping on blankets on the floor.

It was here, according to interviews and court statements, that women marked for punishment were sent and where Gold’s enforcer – her brother Solomon – sexually assaulted them and beat their malnourished bodies with a hookah hose, broomstick or other implements.

NAPTIP officials said Solomon has not been charged with a crime. Gold said in her court statement that she never ordered Solomon to hurt anyone who stayed in her apartment in Dubai.

“I have never at any time instructed him to beat any of the girls as I have never had cause to beat any of them,” she said.

ICIJ and Reuters were unable to contact Solomon.

Victoria Oburoh, one of NAPTIP’s top prosecutors, confirmed that Gold and Owuzo worked together. In May last year, NAPTIP was able to win a conviction of Owuzo on sex trafficking charges in federal court in the Nigerian state of Delta. Oburoh said that case and the one pending against Gold are “sister cases.”

A lawyer who represented Owuzo during her trial declined to comment.

NAPTIP began an investigation of Gold after one of her alleged victims reported her to the police in Nigeria. Authorities charged Gold with six counts of violating Nigeria’s sex trafficking law.

After a judge released her on bail, she failed to show up for a scheduled court appearance on Nov. 3, 2021. Her lawyer told the judge that Gold had been “found half dead on the bed” and taken to a hospital.

The judge ordered that Gold be taken back into custody. But authorities had no luck tracking her down, NAPTIP officials say.

Christy Gold had disappeared.

Put me in prison’

Loudspeakers announced evening prayers at a mosque in Al Baraha, a working-class neighborhood in Dubai’s populous Deira district, when a reporter visited last August.

Steps away, young women in colorful wigs and low-cut evening dresses lined up in front of shabby buildings for their day’s work: providing sex to men. On the fourth and fifth floors of one building, South Asian men sat in the stairway, scrolling on their phones, sipping beer and waiting for their turns with the sex workers.

All the while police vehicles slowly navigated the district’s narrow alleys – part of the policing and surveillance apparatus that keeps UAE authorities deeply informed about what’s going on in Dubai and other emirates.

One of the sex workers was a young woman who arrived from Ghana in June 2022. She said she was promised a job as a housemaid but found herself doing an entirely different kind of work.

She rolled up her dress to show the bruises that came with the job.

“A few days ago, my eyes were swollen after being hit in the face and slapped when I failed to meet the target,” she said. “It’s my boss who did this to me.”

He told her, she said, that if she wanted to gain her freedom, she had to pay a debt of nearly $10,000.

“Where do I go? What do I do?” she asked, breaking into tears. She said her trafficker, whom she didn’t name, had taken away her phone and passport. Another way traffickers and their subordinates control African women is by using the power of juju, a traditional African spiritual belief system.

Women targeted for sex trafficking are required to take “juju oaths,” solemn vows to do the bidding of the recruiters who have promised to help them find work abroad. As part of the oath-taking ceremonies, they are told to strip naked, kneel for hours and swallow noxious drinks that can make them dizzy. They’re warned that breaking their vows of obedience could put a curse on them that could cause injury, death, even generational misfortune for their families.

Most of the women interviewed for this story said they had been required to take a juju oath, with some of the ceremonies conducted in Nigeria and others after they arrived in the UAE.

Three women said in witness statements in Gold’s criminal case that Gold’s associates required them to do oath-taking ceremonies in Nigeria before they traveled to Dubai.

“She makes us believe she has juju,” one woman who claims she’d been trafficked by Gold said in an interview. “That is, if we run away, we can become mad or die.”

In her statement to the court, Gold denied organizing such ceremonies.

When women brave the threats of real violence and otherworldly consequences to try to escape their traffickers, they say they often get little help from Emirati authorities.

A 25-year-old Ugandan said that after she fled a brothel in the Deira district of Dubai where she was forced to work, she headed to the nearest police station. She said a police officer took her back to the brothel and negotiated with the trafficker to return the passport to her. The officer left without doing anything else, and the trafficker took the passport back again, she said.

She got away for good only after she reached out to Nyondo Rozet, a Ugandan YouTube broadcaster based in the UAE. Rozet posted a video about her plight, which raised the money for a plane ticket home.

Rozet, whose videos primarily appeal to the Ugandan community in the UAE, said in an interview that a woman who called her, saying she was the trafficker, offered her money to take the video down. When she refused, Rozet said, other people contacted her to threaten harm if she didn’t delete the video, telling her: “You are not going to survive.”

The Dubai police did not respond to questions about the incident.

A 23-year-old woman from Nigeria’s northeastern farm belt said she thought UAE police would help her after she fled a brothel in Abu Dhabi where she and six other women had been locked in a room filled with steel beds separated by curtains. Every night, she had to have sex with half a dozen men.

She had slipped away when her boss got drunk and left the key in the door. But when she walked into a police station in the Khalidiya area of Abu Dhabi, she said, an officer told her, “Go to where you came from.”

She said she pleaded: “Put me in prison!” But “they turned their back to me. I was crying, but they paid no attention. They said: ‘To Hell with Africa.’”

The police station in Khalidiya did not respond to a request for comment.

Extradition request

For years, large numbers of migrants from Nigeria and other African countries have sought jobs and new lives in Europe. Migration routes have changed as European Union members have pushed migrants back to Libya, the main transit point across the Mediterranean Sea. With the way to Europe increasingly blocked, African migrants have turned, in growing numbers, to the UAE and other rich Arab nations.

Oburoh, the NAPTIP prosecutor, said that when trafficking cases have links to Europe, governments there provide information and cooperation that help the agency apprehend and prosecute traffickers. But when it comes to the UAE, official cooperation is nonexistent, Nigerian anti-trafficking investigators said.

At home, NAPTIP operates in an environment where some government officials also have been accused of engaging in human trafficking – and where, NAPTIP officials say, convicted traffickers often avoid jail terms.

The Nigerian government did not respond to a request for comment.

[clubbingdubai]

Dance Bars with Breathtaking Rooftop Views in Dubai

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[letspartydubai]

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[nuatthebeach]

Thanks for the tag @ashotofogdensoldfirewhiskey and @severedestinytheorist!

Three ships: hinny, @takearisk-ao3 and i's mysterious crack ship, romione, jily (four cause i couldn't decide btwn the last two. and i'm assuming we're sticking to harry potter?? otherwise, it's jude/cardan from the cruel prince.)

Last song: Perfect Places by Lorde

Last movie: hunger games: mockingjay i think? set it up? god it's been a minute since i've seen a movie, but the next one will be the adam project.

Currently reading: the ashes and the star cursed king by carissa broadbent, but tbh, if anyone has any recs, i'm really open to it. i also finished to flame a wild flower by sarah a. parker and OMG what a ride from beginning to end.

Currently watching: Love Is Blind s4, Shadow and Bone s2, Dubai Bling, and Gilmore Girls (if only i had time 💀)

Currently consuming: a Kinder Buenos chocolate bar

Currently craving: milkshakes? dancing? video gaming? writing? all the things i want to do and can't right now, sigh.

Tagging @takearisk-ao3, @fairsquare16, @narukoibito, @corneliaavenue, @rarephloxes, @seriouslysam8, @heartstopping-waves, & others who want to participate!

[birdisland]

Dubai sushi Dubai sushi Dubai sushi....

I KNOW!

Armand creeping on Daniel and Damek sharing a meal in the sushi bar. 

Daniel makes it back to the penthouse just in time to stop Armand from throwing all three of Damek’s kittens into the blender...

Armand: I HEARD YOUR HEARTS DANCING!!!1!!

Daniel: Grow up you immortal idiot.

And then they bang on the kitchen counter.