By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Saturday, February 19, 2011

More than 1,000 stateless people protested in Kuwait Friday demanding citizenship, and dozens were arrested by police, witnesses said.
At least five people, including a security man, were hurt as Kuwaiti riot police clashed with hundreds of stateless Arab protesters demanding rights.
The stateless people, longtime residents of Kuwait known as bidoons, were demanding citizenship, free education, free health care and jobs, benefits available to Kuwaiti nationals.

The elite special forces forcefully dispersed the demonstration, using smoke bombs, water cannon, tear gas and batons after protesters ignored warnings to leave. There were no reports of casualties.
Ambulances rushed an unspecified number of wounded protesters and security men away from the scene, with a witness saying at least five people were hurt, one of them seriously.

Witnesses said a large number of protesters were arrested as they refused orders by police to disperse.
Some 300 stateless Arabs began the protest immediately after noon Friday prayers in Jahra City, 50 kilometers west of Kuwait City, demanding rights and citizenship.

The crowds quickly swelled to some 1,000 despite heavy police presence as the peaceful protest turned violent.
Some of the protesters were carrying copies of the Koran, and chanting slogans of “God is Greatest,” while demanding a solution to their decades-old problem.
They also carried Kuwaiti flags and portraits of the ruler and chanted: “the people want the rights of bidoons,” who have been deprived of their basic rights of education, health and jobs.

Security officials tried in vain to convince them to disperse, and the situation grew tense when some of the protesters threw rocks at security men armed with batons and tear gas canisters.
The protesters also raised slogans against Saleh al-Fadhalah, a former MP who was recently appointed to lead a newly created government body entrusted with resolving the issue of the bidoons. 

Several MPs warned the government against using force against the protesters and blamed it for failing to resolve the problem.

“We call for dealing peacefully with the bidoons’ demonstration and warn against the use of force or arresting the protesters,” Islamist MP Jamaan al-Harabsh said in a statement.
“The protest of bidoons is legitimate and the government is responsible for this because it has failed to resolve the problem,” independent MP Daifallah Buramia said.

Stateless Arabs, estimated at more than 100,000, claim they have the right to Kuwaiti citizenship, but the government says that ancestors of many of them came from neighboring countries and that they are therefore not entitled to nationality.
Kuwait launched a crackdown on them in 2000, depriving them of their essential rights in a bid to force them to reveal what the authorities say are their true identities.

Many bidoons are denied driver’s licenses, cannot get birth certificates for their babies or death certificates for the dead. They are also banned from getting their marriage contracts attested.
Due to stringent state restrictions, a majority of them are living in dire economic conditions in oil-rich Kuwait, where the average monthly salary of native citizens is more than $3,500.
Authorities said after the crackdown some 20,000 bidoons disclosed their original citizenship and were given residence permits like other foreigners.

Most bidoons claim to be Kuwaitis whose forefathers, who lived as bedouin in the desert, failed to apply for citizenship when the state first introduced its nationality law in 1959. – Reuters, AFP