Agence France Presse KUWAIT CITY: A new Kuwaiti law imposing mandatory DNA tests on citizens and foreigners violates the right to personal privacy and should be amended, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
Parliament endorsed the law in early July, less than a week after an ISIS militant blew himself up in a Shiite mosque in Kuwait killing 26 people and wounding more than 200 others.
The new counterterrorism law has made Kuwait the only country to demand nationwide compulsory DNA testing, HRW said.
“Many measures could potentially be useful in protecting against terrorist attacks, but potential usefulness is not enough to justify a massive infringement on human rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW.
The legislation calls on the Interior Ministry to establish a database on all Kuwait’s 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents.
Under the law, people who refuse to give samples for the test face one year in jail and a fine of up to $33,000. Those who provide fake samples can be jailed for seven years.
DNA gathering systems have been outlawed by the European Court of Human Rights, several U.S. domestic courts and others on the grounds of privacy rights, HRW said.
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