“The detainees face charges of provoking residents to demonstrate, threatening security personnel, assaulting police officers on duty, damaging state and private properties, and conspiring with foreign parties,” sources told Al-Rai daily on condition of anonymity.
They further indicated that police were on the look out for other suspects. “Whoever police can prove as being involved in provoking stateless residents and exploiting the fact of their living conditions, will be prosecuted,” the sources added. In another piece of news, Al-Qabas reported yesterday, quoting a Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs insider, that Hajj visas for bedoon pilgrims were expected to be issued by the end of the week “at the very least”.
Kuwait allows a group of stateless residents to perform Hajj each year using temporary Kuwaiti passports. Kuwait has a large community of stateless residents who demand citizenship as well as civil and social rights that they are deprived of, given their illegal residence status.
Meanwhile, the government maintains that some of them are Arabs or descendent of Arab people who deliberately disposed of their original passports after coming to Kuwait and are now seeking citizenship in the oil-rich country.
About two years ago, the Kuwaiti government established a Central Agency for Illegal Residents with the aim of categorizing the stateless residents’ community and identifying those who meet conditions of naturalization, including residents whose Bedoon ancestors failed to register for citizenship following Kuwait’s independence more than fifty years ago.
Last year, the agency adopted certain yardsticks to grant Bedoons several rights that included obtaining marriage, birth and death certificates. The agency was given a five-year ultimatum to resolve the decadesold issue.
Two weeks ago, the Cabinet approved during its weekly meeting a new form of security IDs given to stateless residents.
The new cards, used by stateless residents as their main form of identification, contain colorcoded tags referring to the category under which a particular holder was recognized in state records, including those eligible for naturalization and others about whom the government claimed to have proof that they belonged to other countries.
The term ‘bedoon’ is Arabic for ‘without’, and is used as a loose reference to the fact that stateless residents have been living without a nationality since birth.
