You can listen to this essay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HREn8nUnu5U
When I talk or write about the suffering and the injustice endured by the Stateless people in Kuwait,
people ask me “Who are the stateless?” Or “What do you mean by the Stateless?”
The Stateless are longtime
inhabitants of Kuwait, who have been deprived from citizenship, identity,
health, education, and work. Due to the extreme racism practiced against the
stateless by the Kuwaiti government, they do not carry any official
documentation or any form of identification, no birth certificate, no driver license,
no passport, no marriage certificate, not even a death certificate, they live
and die without a trace, as if never existed. It goes without saying that the
Stateless have no political rights in Kuwait.
The growing problem of the stateless
began as Kuwait gradually transformed into a modern state in the late forties
and early fifties. Until the forties when oil - excavated by the British -
brought wealth to the little state, Kuwait consisted of a small community
living by the Arabian Gulf; fishing, and diving for pearls. And another
community of Bedouins, nomad tribes living in the desert, herding cattle, and
continuously traveling to where water and grass can be found. As oil money
allowed Kuwait to grow and become a recognized civil state, the Kuwaiti
government called its people to apply for official citizenship, and passports,
in an effort to nationalize its people. As the new founded wealth attracted
foreign labor to the state, the Kuwaiti government wanted to draw a clear line
between who was entitled to benefits and who was not. This procedure required
individuals coming forward to bring proof (birth certificates) of fathers and
fore fathers who have been Kuwaiti inhabitants since the twenties. Because
there are many nomad tribes, Bedouins who were in most cases, illiterate. Many
of these tribe members were left out, falling through the cracks of bureaucracy,
numerous Bedouin tribes were not recognized as citizens of Kuwait, and
therefore were also deprived of passports and other identification tying them
to the land. Until the eighties, this did not constitute a huge problem for
some of these Stateless tribes, who were (back then) allowed to enroll their
children in free government schools, and their sons in the army, without proof
of citizenship. However, when the Iraqi invasion upon Kuwait ended in 1991, the
Kuwaiti government claimed that many Iraqis came through the borders, and
settled in the outskirts of the city and demanded to be recognized as Kuwaiti
citizens. Alienating all the Stateless people as non-Kuwaiti drifters who are only
after the benefits a Kuwait citizenship offers. The Kuwaiti government to this
day insists that all the Stateless are either Iraqis, Saudi’s, Jordanians, or
Syrians who claim they are Stateless, but are in reality hiding their country’s
passports, in hopes that they will be issued the Kuwaiti citizenship. The only
way to remove them from Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government claims, is to make their
lives so unbearable, by denying them health, education, and work, in this way,
the Stateless will eventually bring out their real passports and leave to their
homelands. When the Stateless go to The Committee of Illegal Residents (founded
in 2010 as a step to find a solution for the Stateless) showing proof of their
fathers and grandfathers birth certificates, born in Kuwait in the forties and inhabiting
Kuwait since then, and showing that many of them served not only in the Kuwaiti
army, but also as the Sheikh’s personal guards, and fought the Iraqis in 1990, the
committee turns them away claiming the document are forged. The Stateless
cannot seek the courts to demand their rights, as the Kuwaiti citizenship law
keeps all legal matters relating to citizenship outside the scope of the
Kuwaiti court’s jurisdiction. Calling anything relating to citizenship “Matters
of Sovereignty” determined only by the Kuwaiti Sheikh. The sheikh is the Arabic
word for “Ruler”, in most Western news outlets the term “Prince of Kuwait” is used
to describe the ruler, who never really portrayed the image of a prince, always
an old haggard man, suffering from poor in health, and ominous in appearance. Kuwait
is ruled by an authoritarian family called Al Sabah who imprison anyone who criticizes
them. Mubarak Al Sabah, a fascist who ruled Kuwait from (1896 - 1915) made it a
rule that the sheikhdom of the state can only be passed down to his male
descendants. One Fascist Kuwaiti sheikh after another, they all promised to
find a solution for the growing tragedy of the Stateless but to no avail. One
corrupt Kuwaiti government after the other, one weak powerless Kuwaiti
Parliament after the next, promises made but never acted upon. And because the Stateless
never had any political power they were never of any interest to the Parliament.
The Kuwaiti Parliament full of
governmentalists, is another source of shame for Kuwait, brought into
existence in 1960 by then Kuwaiti Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Al Sabah, via what
seemed, at the time, as a progressive constitution, to prove that Kuwait,
barely out of the economic clutches and political control of the British, is
moving towards some form of democracy rather than the one man show, of the
oppressive Al Sabah ruler. However, the poorly drafted Kuwaiti constitution only
gives a pretense of rights and freedoms for the people, it was in reality only
founded to cement Al Sabah’s authority, stating in its articles that Kuwait
will always be under the rule of Al Sabah, that the sheikh has full and complete
sovereignty over the state, and gives the sheikh the power to dissolve the
ramshackle parliament whenever the ruler wishes to do so, a power often
practiced by Kuwaiti Sheikhs.
Sheikh Sabah Al Sabah, (who died
recently in September 2020) was a barbaric autocrat, jailing 5000 Kuwaiti
people during his reign for jokes about him posted on twitter, or any criticism,
or call for political reform, with one man receiving 90 years in prison for a critical
comment made about Sabah on twitter. Sabah Al Sabah called himself The Prince
of Humanity, and forced the media to dub him by this self-founded nick name,
each time he was mentioned in the news which was all day, everyday. Under the reign
of Prince of humanity, I too faced trial for calling him corrupt, and holding
him responsible for the tragedy of and the inhumane treatment of the Stateless,
of which many have began to commit suicide by lighting themselves on fire in
the streets in protest of the extreme hardship and crippling racism they face
in Kuwait. The charges brought against me were defamation, and spreading rumors
with the intention of undermining state security; both felonies. The current
sheikh Nawaf Al Sabah is just as cruel and just as inhumane as his predecessor.
Because Kuwaiti citizenship, by law,
can only be passed on from the father to his offspring. The children of Kuwaiti
women who are married to non-Kuwait men, or Stateless men, are not entitled to
a Kuwaiti citizenship and are treated as Stateless. One would no doubt wonders,
if a Kuwaiti woman was married to a non-Kuwaiti from a different nationality,
say an Egyptian man for example, wouldn’t the child hold the father’s
nationality and be Egyptian? Yes, the child would hold their father’s nationality,
but for a Kuwait woman who divorces her foreign husband and lives in Kuwait
with her children, the only country these children have even known, they are -
in Kuwait – treated as stateless, deprived of all rights afforded to a Kuwaiti
child, her children are considered and treated as Stateless. A Kuwaiti woman
cannot pass on her citizenship to her children, her stateless children cannot
even inherit her property after she dies, this situation where the children of
a Kuwaiti woman cannot even find work in Kuwait highlights the misogyny of that
patriarchal Muslim country. I cannot - this essay – cover all the racism and alienation
by which people carrying other nationalities are treated in Kuwait, that’s a
lengthy subject that must be kept for another essay.
A woman named Shaimaa in her late thirties,
of a Stateless father who died fighting the Iraqis in 1990, and a Kuwait mother
tells me. I graduated from high school, which I was allowed to attend because
my mother holds the Kuwaiti citizenship, but I was denied a certificate of
graduation, I hoped I could go to college, but couldn’t without a high school
diploma. Many years later, officials announced they were offering children of
Kuwaiti women from Stateless fathers the right to go to college, but I had completed
high school so many years ago, and without proof of completion, the only way
for me to enroll was to re-attend high school, I did, but was still not accepted
in the free public college. A Kuwaiti man proposed to me, and my family
accepted him, but when we wanted to get permission to marry at the Committee of
Illegal Residents, where Stateless people like me have to go to get permission
to marry, they told my fiancé he couldn’t marry me as I had no identification.
They refused to acknowledge our union, they said to my fiancé: “why don’t you
marry a Kuwaiti women why do you want to marry “her” pointing at me with
obvious disdain. We traveled to a near by Gulf country by car and got married
there but when we came back to Kuwait to certify the marriage contract, the
committee would not certify it. Relationships between men and women outside
wedlock are illegal in Kuwait, and the committee threatened to arrest us for
adultery, which is punishable with imprisonment. I’ve always wanted to be a
mother, to have a family, but I could not bare to bring a child in this hostile
environment. According to the law a Kuwaiti man can apply for the citizenship
of his non-Kuwaiti wife, this is easily done when a Kuwaiti man marries a
non-Kuwaiti woman, however, because the committee refuses to recognize my
marriage to my husband I suspect, I will never get citizenship, says Shaimaa.
A man in his late twenties named
Mohammed tells me the following, my Kuwaiti grandfather was apolitical activist
in the sixties, as a punishment, the Kuwaiti government stripped him and all
his descendants from citizenship, my father became Stateless even though he
wasn’t borne so, all his children, are too. Fate had my mother - who holds the
Jordanian nationality and was pregnant with me at the time, to seek medical treatment
in the United States due to health issues, as a result I was born in the United
States, my mother returned to Kuwait with me and I was raised there, but as I
grew up I saw that there was no life for me in Kuwait, I couldn’t go to school,
I could never work, or belong there, so I left for the United states, I study
and work in Cleveland, Ohio, I’ve lived in Cleveland for the past nine years.
It’s hard to talk to my siblings in Kuwait, they tell me how oppressed they
are, how incredibly hard life is for them in Kuwait, two sisters and a brother,
neither can work or study, it’s a dead end for them wherever they turn, it’s
especially hard since our mother passed. I want to apply for them to migrate to
the United States, but the procedure is arduous and expensive, they also don’t
want to leave my father alone, and he doesn’t want to migrate to the United States,
sometimes when I speak to my siblings, I feel guilty because I was the only one
who managed to get away from the hell they are living in Kuwait, Mohammed says.
The children of Kuwaiti mothers and
Stateless fathers are in some cases issued a gray passport, different from the
blue Kuwaiti passport. These gray passports ensure they can never obtain a visa
to any country they want to migrate to, as the country of their destination
immediately recognizes the gray passport as belonging to a Stateless person who
will come to that host country to remain not just visit, and is therefore
refused a visit visa. In addition to this, they are refused a visit visa
because they cannot prove they have sufficient funds to visit the host country
by submitting bank statements showing regular income.
The Stateless in Kuwait live well
under the poverty line, denied work opportunities in both the government and
the private sector. When they are offered menial low paying work by private
employers, the general ostracization practiced by the Kuwaiti government and
the Kuwaiti society against them as a whole, emboldens employers to take
advantage of stateless workers, often paying them volatile wages, or paying
them less than other laborers carrying out the same work, or in many cases
denying them pay all together. Without formal work contracts to protect their
labor rights, as the stateless are usually so desperate for any kind of work, they
are willing to accept work without a contract to protect them. This allows
employers to end their services without prior notice, without end of service benefits,
and without remuneration of unpaid wages, knowing fully well that a Stateless
worker cannot turn to the courts to defend their labor rights, or get compensation.
The stateless children are not
accepted in free government Kuwaiti school, the only way for the stateless to
educate their children is to enroll them in poorly built, poorly equipped
private school, founded only to accommodate Stateless children, this is how
deep their isolation from the rest of the Kuwaiti society runs, a Stateless child
never comes into contact with a Kuwaiti child who is a citizen. These schools
are not free and not affordable, and because of this, and because Stateless
parents often can’t afford to enroll their children in these schools, many
stateless children remain illiterate.
I want to remind the reader (or the
listener) here, that Kuwait is a Muslim country, and its people are a Muslim
people. The religion that claims to surpasses all other religions in its
humanity, and its followers are the same people who claim they are the most
merciful, peace loving, and most generous in alms giving.
Although statistics differ, some Kuwaiti
sources say the number of stateless in Kuwait is 25,000 people, some say its
risen to 50,000, and some claim its risen to a 100,000 people. Kuwait is a not
a country known for it’s accuracy or its
transparency, a little oil monarchy with brutal sheikh who keeps his people
pressed hard under his boot, all news in Kuwait is government propaganda.
Although nothing about the Stateless can be found in the daily news papers,
except for lies, in this day and age nothing can be kept hidden from social
media.
Stateless children, particularly
boys are forced to work from a young age, and because work is not available,
they are forced to sell vegetables or watermelons in the streets. Kuwaiti
locals drive their expensive German cars in the 120 degrees scorching heat and
dust Kuwait is famous for and see eight year old Stateless boys selling water
melons in the street. They drive their kids to school, when they know that this
eight year old boy will never get a chance to get an education
I participated in several of the
peaceful Stateless protests. I was there and saw how the Kuwaiti government
oppressed these demonstrations by sending Special Forces in army tanks and
spraying the protestors with tear gas and hot water. The special forces were
violent; beating and injuring many of the protestors with batons, including
myself. When I saw three cops beating a stateless man and tried to intervene I
got hit in the stomach with a baton. When I tried to take pictures of the
violence on my cell phone, the Special Forces confiscated my phone, destroyed
it, and threatened to detain me. Although I could not keep the pictures I took
of the protests, a photographer provided me with photos which I published in a
book I will mention at the end of this essay. The stateless protestors, most of
them young men, are arrested and imprisoned for five years or more, for
protesting peacefully. This is the reason why many Stateless men are burning
themselves in the streets as the only way for them to protest and escape
imprisonment.
Here are the names of Stateless men
I know of, who either hung themselves or burned themselves alive in Kuwait in
the past year:
Ali Al Shammari who was a twelve-year-old
boy, he took his life by hanging in February 2021
Before Ali, Yakoub Mifrih who was
twenty-six-years old, he also took his own life by hanging.
Before Yakoub, Bader Al Fadli lit
himself on fire
Before Bader, Zayed Al Asmi, lit
himself on fire.
and Before Zayed, Talal Al Khulaifi,
also took his life by lighting himself on fire in the street.
Two new suicides took place, one of
them on June 8th 2021 and another on August 6th 2021. I
could not find the names of these two last victims in my search on the internet
and social media, only the news that these men, one of them an elderly man,
took their lives by immolation.
The Kuwaiti government lead by the
Sheik forbids any local papers from printing anything negative about Kuwait,
the stateless suicides are not mentioned, And the the day after a peaceful
protest by the stateless, all the local newspapers announces the same propaganda,
that there was a riot by the stateless, that the Kuwaiti forces succeeded in
bringing it under control, that the Stateless were violent towards the police,
and that they burned tires and damaged property.
Kuwaiti papers publish other lies
about how the Kuwaiti government is improving the lives of the Stateless, by
lifting some of the restriction, issuing them a kind of ID that allows them
drive legally, or accepting their children in free public schools, but these
are all lies, if anything, the lives of the Stateless in Kuwait are worsening
every day.
The committee of the Illegal
Residents, chaired by a corrupt man named Saleh Al Fadala a puppet installed by
the Sheikh, Al Fadala has been announcing since the committee’s foundation in
2010, that the committee has proof that the Stateless belong to other
countries, however, such documents are never revealed, neither to the public,
or the stateless people concerned.
In regards to the Kuwaiti Muslim
people, and I want to emphasize the word Muslim here, they are well aware of
the Stateless tragedy in their country. They either believe the lies the
Kuwaiti government feeds them, and, therefore justify the inhumane treatment of
the Stateless, these lies include: that the stateless are illegal residents who
will not leave to their home countries where they belong. They are a nuisance. They
are criminal offenders. They are unwanted immigrants who will weigh heavily on
the country’s economy if they were legalized. And (the oldest trick in the
book) the stateless will take away job opportunities and benefits from the
natives. Please remember, we are talking about an oil rich country with a
population of two and half million people only. Some Kuwaiti people want a
solution for the Stateless tragedy but fear of imprisonment or job loss keeps
them quiet.
How are the Stateless in Kuwait
coping with the pandemic? They are denied the COVID19 vaccine by Kuwaiti
hospitals, allow me to emphasize for the third time here, that Kuwait is a
Muslim country. This is the humanity Muslims claim they practice.
In 2012, while I was a law
professor living in Kuwait, I publicized that I wanted to hold a literary
competition for the Stateless, I asked them to send me poems, short stories,
and other prose describing their daily lives, their hopes, and their fears. The
competition had two categories, the first was for children under eighteen, and
the second was for the eighteen year olds and older. Three winners from each
category got a monetary prize, and I collected all of the poems and prose into
a booklet I named “Juthoor” The Arabic word for Roots. I printed a thousand
copies, sold them, gave the revenue to Stateless children to cover school fees,
it wasn’t much, but it helped.
This collection is in Arabic, a digital copy is available to access on my website: https://fatimaalmatar.com/book/
I hope to translate the collection
into English someday.
I have published an Arabic copy of
this essay, on my blog: http://fatimaalmatar.blogspot.com/2021/06/blog-post.html
and an audio version of the Arabic essay
on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6tTa8vUA_I&t=169s
