Known as Bedouin, more than 1,000 of them clashed with security forces in the province of Al-Jahra, 30 miles west of the capital Kuwait City, on Friday. Human Rights Watch reported that 120 demonstrators were arrested and approximately 30 others requiring medical treatment. On Saturday hundreds returned to the streets in Sulaibiya, north of the capital, demanding the release of the detainees in Friday’s demonstrations, which the government termed illegal.
“Thanks to events in Tunisia and Egypt, we have broken the fear barrier, and many Bedouin joined the demonstrations, including children,” Musaad Al-Shamari, a 35-year-old resident of Kuwait without citizenship papers, told The Media Line. “The street refuses the restrictions imposed on it by the government. People are demanding their honor.” The number of Bedouin, an Arabic abbreviation of Bidoon Jinsiyah or “without citizenship,” is estimated at between 100,000 and 120,000 in a population of 2.8 million.
Mostly descendants of Bedouin nomads who failed to apply for citizenship when Kuwait passed its citizenship law in 1959, the Bedouin cannot legally work in Kuwait and are denied health care, public education and access to courts. They are also denied a piece of the huge largesse that comes from the country’s oil resources.
The government requires them to relinquish citizenship claims in order to receive birth, marriage or death certificates, Human Rights Watch reported. Al-Shamari said that up until 1986 Bedouin enjoyed the same rights as regular Kuwaitis, except for the right to vote. During the 1980s, they comprised some 90% of Kuwait’s army and Interior Ministry personnel, he said.
“My father, who was born in Kuwait in 1952, was never granted citizenship even though he worked for the Ministry of Interior,” Al-Shamari stated. “I have no document proving that my three children, born in 2005, 2006 and 2010 are mine.”
Abdallah Al-Shaiji, head of the political science department at Kuwait University, said a comprehensive solution had to be found for the Bedouin. He argued that some Bedouin have Kuwaiti mothers and therefore merit naturalization. But others, comprising the vast majority, do not and should be repatriated to their countries of origin.
“Somewhere between 75% and 90% of Bedouin have no Kuwaiti lineage,” Al-Shaiji told The Media Line. “They came from countries such as Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia and for years have enjoyed the perks Kuwait offers its citizens.” “Being a citizen of Kuwait gives one enormous benefits,” Priyanka Motaparthy, a Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Media Line. “On the occasion of the country’s 50th anniversary, the government just gave a grant of KD1,000 or $3,500 to every citizen — including children.” Other benefits include free education, free health care and government subsidies to employees of both the private and public sectors, she said.
Motaparthy said Bedouin have existed in Kuwait since the country’s independence in 1961. Some 100,000 citizenship applications are currently pending review, with tens of thousands of applications on hold for decades. Citizenship applications are reviewed behind closed doors and not in courts because they are national security questions and therefore barred from judicial review, she added.
The body entrusted with the issue of naturalization in Kuwait is the Central Authority to Resolve the Situation of Illegal Residents, which has existed under different names since 1993. Only a few hundred Kuwaitis are naturalized every year, and deliberations are never made public, Motaparthy said.
“We demand a transparent mechanism to review cases on a one by one basis, not as blanket decisions,” she said, adding that over the past months the government illegally threatened Bedouin not to assemble, restricting their democratic right to protest. A 2007 draft law would grant Bedouin civil rights but not nationality, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported.
Bedouin aren’t the only Kuwait residents facing discrimination. More than one million foreign nationals who reside in Kuwait, constituting 80% of the country’s workforce often face exploitative labor conditions, human rights groups warned.
Kuwaiti authorities, for their part, traditionally claim that the Bedouin carry foreign citizenship cards, which they destroy in order to obtain the benefits Kuwait gives its citizens. The Kuwaiti press on Sunday dubbed the Bedouin “illegal residents,” claiming the main provocateur in the demonstrations holds British citizenship.
Salah Al-Fadalah, head of the Central Authority to Resolve the Situation of Illegal Residents, told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan that the government actually spends more money on illegal aliens than on the country’s citizens.
Al-Shaiji, the political scientist, said that rioting was expected in light of events in the Arab world, but added that Kuwait’s situation was fundamentally different.
“I want to stress that these are not citizens,” he told The Media Line. “They are illegal aliens who have now become a major thereat to Kuwaiti national security.”
