“We want this from your highness the Amir, not the government, not the ministers,” the mainly young men chanted as helicopters circled overhead. The Interior Ministry blocked all entrances and exits to Taima and warned that “any person found in Taima square will be arrested”.
The bedoons were protesting a decision by the central department that deals with “illegal residents” to issue IDs based on categories, some of which are considered for naturalization while others call for forcing bedoons to reveal their real nationality. The bedoons called for the demonstration to coincide with the start of issuing these IDs, which they considered evidence of the “department’s lack of intention to solve the problem”.
Masked police dressed in black and wielding long batons charged the group and led away a handful of protesters, gripping them by the back of the neck. “Look at how they treat us, look at this!” shouted an older man, banging a cane on the ground. Most of the other demonstrators ran into the surrounding residential areas crammed with squat corrugated metal houses lined by dirt roads. “I came to be here with my stateless brothers,” Kuwaiti Nasser Al-Nanafan said, with the country’s flag draped over his shoulders. “I am calling for their rights.”
Numbering up to 180,000 people, the bedoons are denied citizenship under strict nationality laws in Kuwait, whose citizens are entitled to generous welfare benefits. Kuwait’s wealth has helped it avoid any major spillover of the “Arab Spring” pro-democracy revolts onto its territory. But a deadlock between parliament and the government and accusations of graft by the ex-prime minister have stirred unrest.
Police over the past year have also broken up several marches of stateless demonstrators that attracted several hundred people in marginalised neighbourhoods in Jahra. Large demonstrations are rare in Kuwait. Kuwait’s population, including foreign workers, is around 3 million. It is considered the most democratic state in a Gulf region dominated by Western-backed dynasties.
