Bidoon: A Cause and Its Literature Are Born

 In a brilliant and personal essay on the history of Bidoon literature, Mona Kareem shows why literature cannot be thought along national lines.

Translation from Arabic: Alice Guthrie

1.

Here we are in exile once again. We’re not the first Arab generation to cast itself into the labyrinth, and we won’t be the last. Sometimes they call us migrants or refugees; at other times they call us marginalized—then they invite us to talk, from the margin, about the margin: “How’s the weather over there on the margin?” They put us in anthologies that no one will read but the mummies in Middle East Studies, and they consider our poems and novels as documentaries, or treat them as confessions from the dark end of the tunnel. Perhaps there might be a little progress, consisting of a hyphen, tantamount to a mist-shrouded bridge, being placed between our identity and theirs: “Arab-American.” It’s a bridge not intended for crossing, one they take it upon themselves to guard; someday they’ll erect an electric fence on it.

I’ve spent ten years in the USA now. I haven’t obtained nationality yet, so I still travel on a twelve-month refugee passport, each annual renewal taking three months on the grounds that travel is a luxury. I am referred to, without hesitation, as an “Arab-American” writer; I don’t know when exactly this transformation occurred, shifting my classification from “exiled Arab” to “Arab-American.” By contrast, I was born in Kuwait and raised there until the age of twenty-two, by which time I had already published two poetry collections and worked for five years for local newspapers. In fact there was hardly a field I hadn’t dabbled in, from acting to theater criticism to literary translation to political organizing—feminism, workers’ rights, and the Bidoon cause.[1] I also played violin, oud, and piano, and if my voice hadn’t been thin and ugly, you would even have found me singing in the shopping malls and on the polluted beaches of the Gulf. I lived large during a short life, succeeded and failed and grew, all of it without a denotation or a classification to my name.

In 2011, after the Bidoon movement was born in the streets, there came to be something known as “Bidoon literature.” Prior to that, “Kuwaiti literature” anthologies and encyclopedias had ignored our very existence, their raison d’être being to shore up the idea that Kuwaitis actually had such a thing as a literature—and that by extension they also had a nation, a history, and a state. They excluded us Bidoon from the Kuwaiti Writers’ Association and from all public benefit associations. Although these are supposed to be more democratic than the state, they are in reality even more reactionary, grim, and racist than the state is. We would chat with our migrant comrades—the Egyptians, Syrians, Palestinians, and other Arabs wandering lost in petroland—and make friends with them in the knowledge that all of us existed on the margin, the margin of here and the margin of there, without knowing how to create anything out of this margin—a geography of our very own, say, or at least a space based on something other than His Lordship Mr. Citizen. “Bidoon literature” would never have been born without the birth of the Bidoon movement. Every political cause has an innate need for literature, for culture, to voice the suffering of a people and recount their progress towards their collective aspirations. Someone’s profile would be defined by the single vague line “born in Kuwait,” with the phrase “a Bidoon poet” deleted by the editor, because how can anyone be defined by a negation?

على أطلال الأدب القومي أو عن أدب يكتبه الغرباء

 ها نحن ثانية في المنفى، لسنا بأول جيل عربي يسّيب نفسه للمتاهة كما لن نكون الأخيرين، يسموننا مهاجرين تارة أو لاجئين ومهمشين تارة أخرى، يدعوننا للحديث عن الهامش من الهامش "كيف هو الطقس على الهامش؟" يضعوننا في أنطولوجيات لن يقرأها سوى مومياوات المؤسسات أو جيتوهات دراسات الشرق الأوسط، يتعاملون مع قصائدنا ورواياتنا باعتبارها وثائق، أو اعترافات من الجانب المظلم من النفق. أو قد يتطور الأمر قليلًا فيضعون شرطة هي بمثابة جسر ضبابي بين هويتنا وهويتهم "عربي-أمريكي"، جسر لا يهدف للعبور، يتولون حراسته، وسوف يبنون عليه حائطًا مكهربًا يومًا ما.

قضيت في الولايات المتحدة حتى الآن 10 سنوات. لم أحصل على الجنسية بعد وما زلت أسافر بجواز سفر لاجئ مدته 12 شهرًا، ويقتضي تجديده 3 شهور في كل مرة، باعتبار أن السفر رفاهية. يتم الإشارة إليّ باعتباري كاتبة "عربية-أمريكية" بلا تردد، ولا أعلم متى بالضبط حدث التحول في تصنيفي من "كاتب عربي منفي" إلى كاتب "عربي- أمريكي".

في المقابل، ولدت وتربيت في الكويت حتى سن الثانية والعشرين، نشرت خلالها مجموعتين شعريتين، عملت في الصحف المحلية لخمس سنوات، بل أني لم أترك مجالًا إلا وتمرغت فيه: التمثيل، النقد المسرحي، الترجمة الأدبية، التنظيم السياسي، النسوي والعمالي و"البدوني"، لعبت على الكمنجة والعود والبيانو، ولولا أن صوتي شحيح وقبيح لوجدتموني أغني في المولات التجارية وعلى شواطئ الخليج الملوثة. عشت حياة ضخمة خلال عمر قصير، نجحت وفشلت وكبرت، كل ذلك دون مسمى أو مصنف أحمله.

في 2011، وبعد ولادة حراك "البدون" في الشارع الكويتي، صار هنالك شيء اسمه "أدب البدون". من قبل، كانت أنطولوجيات وموسوعات الأدب الكويتي تتجاهل وجودنا، والتي لا هدف منها سوى تثبيت فكرة أن لدينا بالفعل أدبًا وبالتالي لدينا أيضًا أمة وتاريخًا ودولة، يقصوننا من "رابطة الأدباء الكويتيين" ومن كل جمعيات النفع العام التي من المفترض أن تكون أكثر ديمقراطية من الدولة إلا أنها في الحقيقة أكثر بؤسًا ورجعية وعنصرية.

نتصاحب ونتسامر مع رفاقنا المهاجرين، من المصريين والسوريين والفلسطينيين وغيرهم من العرب التائهين في بلاد النفط، نعرف أننا على الهامش، هامش الهنا وهامش الهناك، ولا نعرف كيف نخلق من هامشنا هذا شيئًا، جغرافية أخرى خاصة بنا، مساحة غير قائمة على السيد المواطن. لم يكن لـ "أدب البدون" أن يولد لولا أن حراك البدون قد ولد، فكل قضية سياسية بالطبيعة تحتاج إلى الأدب والثقافة لتسريد معاناة وحراك قوم ما نحو تطلعاتهم الجمعية. كانت النبذة التعريفية للواحد تأتي في سطر مبهم "ولد في الكويت" أو أن تكتب "شاعر بدون" فيقوم المحرر بإلغائها، إذ كيف يمكن تعريف الواحد بصيغة النفي.

Remembering the Stateless Women

Writing this post on the International Women’s Day, I thought of speaking about stateless women. I feel obligated to make the disclaimer that those ‘international days’ are indeed problematic to practice as they further ‘other’ all those ‘celebrated’ groups. In other words: Why would we discuss women issues and celebrate their struggle, if we do so every day?

Those days highlight the irony of our realities in relation to gender issues. However, I will use this ‘ritual day’ to speak of stateless women. By stateless women, I do not only mean women I grew up around as a stateless person from Kuwait, but also other stateless women around the world. This includes Kurdish and Palestinian women in the region, and also women in refugee camps around the world.

Around the Arab world, the middle class women leading women rights movements are still obsessed with integrating themselves into the body of citizenhood. Considering how most of women rights movements started with fighting for voting rights, women issues have been centered on the system and regulations.

Targeted by Kuwaiti Police, Stateless Video Blogger Calls it Quits

A video blogger known for documenting violence against stateless protesters in Kuwait has quit, writing on Twitter that authorities beat and coerced him to do so.

Under the nickname “حمقان البدون” meaning the “Angry Bedoon“, (Arabic for stateless), the blogger made a name for himself in his community for using footage of violence by riot police against stateless protesters to make videos on YouTube subtitled in English. Many of his videos were used by TV channels, being the only footage available documenting violence against stateless protesters.

His story was first reported by Alaan online newspaper with the title “The Bedoon's Minister of Information Resigns.” The move comes nearly three months after the arrest of activist Abdulhakim al-Fadhli, who is currently on hunger strike.  Al-Fadli has been sentenced to two years in jail for using Twitter to organize and mobilize protests.

* Continue reading here

The Myth of Kuwaiti Democracy

Kuwaiti activist arrested in a Bedoon protest

“We just want to be like Kuwait” is a sentence that one might often hear from people of the Gulf – specifically Saudis and Bahrainis. The sentence reflects either their desire for greater individual freedoms or to be able to express themselves freely in politics. In the 1960s and '70s, Kuwait was one of the centers of the Arab world in hosting politicians, intellectuals, and a dominant, powerful progressive opposition – a place where movements of all kinds were active in demanding change and greater freedoms. Kuwaiti women were involved in sports, the arts, and politics decades before their counterparts in the rest of the Arab Gulf. It is for all these factors that Kuwait has been referred to as the only democracy in the Gulf – factors that have disappeared in the past three decades.

In the 1980s, supporting political Islam was the government’s response to counter the dominance of leftist movements. The game did not succeed at the beginning, but it surely did after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The stance of Arab regimes and Arab leftists in support of Saddam’s invasion was the bullet that killed leftism in Kuwait. A new page was turned and the political map was dominated by the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), Salafis, old-money conservatives, tribes, and liberals (as the alternative to leftists).

Right now, the political map in Kuwait is confusing and points to a state totally dominated by the government since the constitutional court dissolved the parliament last June. The country is waiting for the reinstalled 2009 parliament to be dissolved by the emir and for new elections to take place. All of this comes after last February’s victory by the Islamist-Conservative majority. The Arab Spring is definitely having an impact on Kuwait; on political citizens and on the stateless (Bedoon) community.

All this time, authorities in Kuwait have been trying to fabricate proof against anyone political in Kuwait. It has been trying to conceal its violations against the stateless and migrant workers. It has been silent towards all those online users sentenced to jail for criticizing authorities or expressing their views toward religion. Why? Simply because the country does not want its ‘democracy’ to die; at least not in front of the world.

All those violated in Kuwait have been paying the price for this dead myth; the councilors of Kuwait keep warning of the perils of letting this myth die. Kuwait does not receive the criticism it deserves, not only because it ‘pays’ to stave off attention, but because violations and conditions across the Gulf are comparatively worse and well-publicized, especially in the media. But there is no Kuwaiti democracy; tear gas and shotguns have already arrived and are in use!

How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when the country gives money to the regimes of Bahrain and Jordan without parliamentary approval? How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when the parliament is dissolved and frozen at whim? How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when protesting is continuously criminalized by the state despite all constitutional rights? How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when women are still unequal to men despite having obtained their political rights and being publicly elected? How can there be a democracy when the stateless (Bedoon) of Kuwait are always illegally arrested, interrogated, tortured, and threatened? How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when migrant workers are beaten, tortured, insulted and raped without legal recourse to protect themselves?

On Tuesday, a Bedoon protester was shot in the eye. Let’s open our eyes to the real state of Kuwaiti democracy.

* Published in Al-Akhbar

Whose Refugees Matter More?

In my previous post, I wrote about the recent meeting of the United Nation’s Human Rights Council about Bahrain. Recommendations “demanded” Bahrain to stop its systematic violations that include killing protesters, arresting hundreds, torture cases, and many other things. Will Bahrain take the recommendations seriously? If not, will the United Nations put sanctions on Bahrain? Will it send observers to Bahrain? Will it discuss any kind of intervention? The answer is: of course not!

It is no surprise that the United Nations with all its bodies has brought nothing but disappointment to the Arab world, but when it comes to the regimes of the Gulf and their practices, the story is even worse. Another establishment of the United Nations that should be looked at is the UNHCR – or the UN Refugees Agency. If you are constantly following up the statements made by the agency’s representatives, you will not be surprised to know how double their standards are. In Syria, for decades, the Agency did not bother to fight for the Kurdish community, stating that they would rather work in Syria according to the regime’s rules than lose their place in the country and thus be unable to help other refugees.

Similar statements were made in all the interviews with the Agency’s representatives in Kuwait. Although the agency includes the stateless (Bedoon) community in Kuwait under the umbrella of refugees, the agency offers no help to them and makes no comments on Kuwait’s continuous violations against them. A few days ago, Hanan Hamdan, the head of the Agency’s office in Kuwait, enraged the Bedoon by stating: “Naturalization of Bedoon is a decision up to Kuwaiti authorities.” She also suggested that Kuwait should organize a conference to speak about its “leading experience” in dealing with the issue of statelessness; surely she wasn’t referring to the state’s experience in arresting more than 200 protesters, torture cases, and denying Bedoon their rights to documents, health care, employment, and education. The meeting covered by Kuwaiti press showed Hamdan with Saleh al-Fidala; the man assigned by the Kuwaiti government to solve the issues of Bedoon despite his being openly racist against the stateless community.

This meeting and Hamdan’s statement came right after Kuwait’s donationof a million dollars to Syrian refugees. Certainly, no Bedoon or Kuwaiti objects to the offering of aid to Syrian refugees, especially after seeing their government, in the absence of a parliament, give billions to the regimes of Bahrain, Jordan, and Oman a couple of weeks ago. The objection comes to the policies of the United Nations establishment that cares more about keeping donations from Gulf regimes coming by complimenting their “brilliant” plans in dealing with statelessness!

Shortly after that scandalous meeting, three international human rights organizations published a letter addressed to the Emir of Kuwait calling him to grant rights to the Bedoon community. The statement confirmed that Kuwait hasn’t fulfilled any of its promises made to international committees regarding the issue of Bedoon. It also states that Bedoon are facing continuous abuse and discrimination and are denied their basic rights, documents, and deserved naturalization.

So what should we expect from UN bodies in the Gulf? Well, nothing really. As long as Gulf regimes keep throwing money at them, we will never see them standing clearly against the violations of their donors. The better option is not to expect much of them and to, instead, keep unveiling their hypocrisy.

* published in AlAkhbar

An Invisible Nation: The Gulf’s Stateless Communities

Image from I. Piccioni-A. Tiso/Molo7 Photo Agency

The issue of statelessness in the Gulf is as old as the post-colonial oil states from which they are actively being excluded. Until the 1980s, the status of the Bedoon was not seen as a political issue, with the fledgling governments more concerned with state building functions than with further limiting citizenship rights. The oil bust of the 1980s, however, strained the budgets of the Gulf regimes, who responded by constraining social services and restricting citizenship laws. The brunt of these restrictions largely fell on the stateless population—and in some Gulf states on migrant workers as well—who had been allowed health care and public education. Their intent was to force those seeking Gulf citizenship—particularly the Bedoon—to leave and start their lives as citizens elsewhere. These restrictions only served to exacerbate the numbers of stateless subjects, as few opted to abandon their family ties and communities or their geographic attachments in search for a new home country.

The 2010 UNCHR statistical book maintains that there are seventy thousand stateless subjects in the Saudi kingdom alone. This surely excludes hundreds of thousands of Mawaleed, a category which includes both those who are born in the country to foreign parents and those children of Saudi women from foreign fathers. In both cases, there is rarely any activism or reporting on statelessness in Saudi Arabia. It is believed that the seventy thousand includes families living in remote areas who are either unaware of documentation procedures or do not care to be registered in the system.

In Bahrain, considering the politicization of naturalization, the oppressed Shia majority understandably opposes the idea of granting citizenship. In the past decade, stateless Bahrainis and “mercenaries” have been naturalized as the state has sought to shift the demographic balance. Bahraini opposition claims that the regime has naturalized up to 120,000 but there are no official numbers. Those naturalized stateless persons are believed to be residents of Bahrain for two generations or children of Bahraini women who are married to foreigners. The “mercenaries” were naturalized after being brought from Yemen, Syria, Pakistan and other countries to work in security forces. The 1994-2001 popular uprising had resulted in the repeal of the State Security Law and the reestablishment of constitutional rule under the new monarch, thus limiting state power. In response, the Prime Minister expanded political naturalization in an attempt to change the demographics of Bahrain to weaken the Shia majority. He felt that he was becoming powerless and, with the support of Saudi Arabia, led the push for naturalization to further strengthen his role through the police and army. Resultantly, the current number of stateless persons in Bahrain does not exceed two thousand, most of whom are children of Bahraini women.

While the struggles of stateless communities in other Gulf countries remain largely undocumented, Qatar presents a slightly different case. Several reports were released for the first time earlier this year about the stateless population there, estimated at three thousand people who belong to one or two tribes. The reports provide accounts from a number of the Bedoon about their living conditions and in which they contrast the Bedoon’s struggle to the ease with which athletes are naturalized in return for their services. The numbers are comparatively smaller but again, little is known about their plight. Few Qatari Bedoon are politically active online and there are no statistics, official or otherwise, on the number of children of Qatari mothers who have not been naturalized. The reports’ criticism centers around Qatar’s increasing role and intervention in regional politics when the small state should be dealing with its own internal problems, including its major violations of human rights against migrant workers and its stateless community.

Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates present the most interesting cases of statelessness in the Gulf. Kuwait has approximately 120,000 Bedoon, the vast majority of whom belong to Arab tribes that had settled in the desert prior to independence. Kuwait does not grant women the right to pass citizenship on to their children, which has greatly exacerbated the problem of statelessness, since many Kuwaiti women have and continue to marry Bedoon men. Instead of attempting to assuage the increasing tension with and the struggles of the Bedoon population, Kuwaiti authorities issued a secret decision in 1986 to gradually strip this community of all its rights. Denied any form of official documentation in the 1990s, the Bedoon lost all access to formal employment, health care, and education.

In 2008, the Bedoon in Kuwait began to organize politically for the first time (following the lead of activists in the United Kingdom—notably, Mohammed Waly Al-Enizi—and in Canada), and have become increasingly active. They started with sit-ins, but participation was low and they were met with significant opposition from the police. With the failure of organized sit-ins, Bedoon activists turned to awareness campaigns about the plight of their community. They started to sponsor lectures that educated Kuwaiti society and media about the Bedoon, focusing on first dismantling all the existing stereotypes on those who are stateless and shedding light on the forms of discrimination they face. It was not until the 2011 uprisings, however, that things really began to change. Bedoon protests started in February 2011. Tens of Bedoon activists have subsequently been arrested, with some tortured, released, tried, and then acquitted. Kuwaiti authorities have responded recklessly, without any sense of direction or long-term plan. On the one hand, they made big promises to the Bedoon in order to diffuse the tension when their protests garnered significant media attention. On the other hand, they violently cracked down on protesters when the media was preoccupied with other things. Bedoon protests are ongoing nonetheless. They are mostly organized in reaction to official statements and the arrest of activists, or to bring attention to their plight. The protests often take advantage of political opportunities and openings, when the country is going through a political crisis such as the latest court decision to dissolve the parliament for being unconstitutional. The Bedoon have achieved little by way of legal gains. Yet, Kuwaiti society is finally getting to know the reality of Bedoon life and suffering and some Kuwaitis are starting to extend their support. Kuwaiti “Group 29” was able to secure one hundred seats for the highest ranking Bedoon students after having a daily sit-in in front of Kuwait University’s admission office last month.

The struggle of the Bedoon in the United Arab Emirates has recently emerged from the political unrest of the Arab Spring. Until last year, the United Arab Emirates had not only successfully managed to block any information about its stateless communities, but was also actively engaged in removing the Bedoon from their homeland. UAE authorities bought passports from the Comoros and gave its stateless community an ultimatum: either accept these new citizenships, or become illegal residents and detained. Surely this inspired their Kuwaiti counterparts who instead purchased Eritrean, Dominican, and Albanian passports. The United Arab Emirates provides no official statistics on its stateless community but according to a report in the Emirati English-language newspaper The National, they numbered about one hundred thousand four years ago. The actual population is likely double this number, without even including the thousands of children of Emirati mothers who are denied passing citizenship to their children. While the United Arab Emirates has recently claimed to have issued a decision to allow female citizens to pass citizenship to their children, in reality, committees were formed to examine their cases on an individual basis.

In the past few years, when communicating online with stateless men from the United Arab Emirates, I was surprised by how terrified they were of speaking about statelessness or even telling me that they are stateless. Some Emirati artists and bloggers do not openly admit that they are stateless for fear of both being judged according to society’s stereotypes against them and being arrested. Their fears are justified, given that the UAE authorities recently revoked Bedoon activist Ahmed Abdalkhaleq’s travelling document, gave him a Comoros passport instead, and exiled him to Thailand. Abdalkhaeq was one of the UAE5 who were arrested last year for demanding reforms. According to The Economist, he also runs a website about the stateless community in his country. So far, the wave of political arrests in the United Arab Emirates has cost the community fourteen members and stripped several of them of their nationalities.

In Kuwait, there are many blogs and forums that allow the Bedoon to speak of their cause. This year alone witnessed the rise of Kuwaiti activists devoted to the Bedoon, their protests, and their rights. The cyber world, however, seems to have no place for the Emirati activists, who are much more fearful of their security regime. However, just the way the UAE5 encouraged others to speak up, Abdelkhaleq seems to be the one who will set up the way for his community to be active and speak out. Abdelkhaleq is one of the UAE5, but he had received little media attention until his detention and subsequent deportation.

Despite all differences, with Saudi Arabia being the most extreme model and Kuwait being the least oppressive example, the Gulf countries look very much alike in their failed policies when dealing with statelessness. This is a region with corrupt and oppressive authoritarian regimes committing political and economic suicide by refusing to heed calls for change. This invisible nation of stateless communities residing in and around the Gulf is becoming increasingly outspoken. Oppression, forged passports, and exile are all methods that do not seem to work with the Gulf’s stateless community, especially when we consider how thousands of young women and men are denied basic rights and have no means to leave their countries. The Gulf states, with the exception of Bahrain, have so far been able to portray their countries as less in crisis than the rest of the Arab region and thus to hide their internal problems from the light of day. This status quo will not long remain, as minorities and communities like the Bedoon continue to mobilize.

* Published in Jadaliyya

Exile is Not the Answer to Statelessness!

A year ago, many Bedoon activists wouldn’t have been able to answer questions about the status of their counterparts in the United Arab Emirates due to a media blackout that the country was able to maintain until this year when they decided to send Bedoon activist Ahmed Abdul-Khaleq into exile. The Bedoon in the UAE number at least 100,000. Many of them are children of citizen mothers who are not allowed to pass citizenship to their children or spouses. Abdul-Khaleq was one of the five arrested last year for demanding reforms and democratic changes in the country. Since his release, the government has been planning to get rid of him as he calls on other Bedoon to speak up for their rights.

* Continue reading this post in Al-Akhbar's "The Subaltern." 

Statslöshet i Kuwait

Att vara statslös innebär att man saknar alla medborgerliga rättigheter, som personliga dokument, utbildning, arbete och tillgång till sjukvård. Den som vill bli medborgare i Kuwait måste ha registrerat sig i 1965 års folkräkning, annars betraktas de av regeringen som illegala bofasta. I dag finns det omkring 100 000 statslösa i Kuwait. Journalisten Mona Kareem som själv är statslös, förklarar det kontroversiella i ett problem som sällan diskuteras i internationella medier.

Arrests and Trials of Kuwait’s Stateless Protesters

Kuwaiti riot police use water cannons to disperse stateless protesters (AFP, Yasser al-Zayyat).

There are at least 120,000 Bidun jinsiyya (without nationality) in Kuwait today suffering from the lack of human rights. They cannot legally obtain birth, death, marriage or divorce certificates. The same applies to driving licenses, identification cards, and passports. They do not have access to public education, health care, housing or employment. And while they face some of the state’s harshest discrimination policies, they have no recourse to the law and its courts. Simply stated, the Bidun, who are equal to about 10% of the Kuwaiti population, do not exist. They have been dehumanized and rendered invisible by government policies coupled with pervasive social stigmatization.

Last February and March, Hundreds of the stateless community in Kuwait protested demanding their rights of documentation, education, health care, employment, and naturalization. The protests were brutally dispersed by riot police and tens of young men were arrested for a week or so. Riot Police used water cannons, teargas, smoke bombs, and concussion grenades to disperse the protesters. According to Human Rights Watch, over 30 people were injured and 120 were detained by state security in the first day of Bidun protests.

On the 12th of December, the stateless attempted to protest again to state their demands and to show support for those who were going on trials for protesting. Around 31 men were in court for ‘illegal protesting’ and were released as the judge decided to adjourn the case to the 23rd of January. Kuwaiti and stateless activists showed up to the court hearing to show support as the interior ministry refused to give permissions for any sit-ins. Kuwait Human Rights Association issued a statement condemning the trials and stating that the Kuwait constitution grants the rights to peaceful protesting and thus none should be prosecuted. Parliament members did not have a say in this and the only political bloc to have issued a statement in solidarity was the leftist Taqadomi movement. According to their lawyer Mousaed Al-Shammari, the 31 men might get 3 to 5 years jail sentences.

On the 14th, three other stateless men faced another trial for illegal protesting: Abdulhakim Al-Fadhli, Tariq Al-Otaibi, and Ridha Al-Fadhli. On Sunday the 18th, other 45 stateless men will face another trial and this time charged with violence against police men. The charges in the first two trials were submitted by the public prosecution, but in the coming trial, charges were submitted by the state security police. According to Kuwait Human Rights Association’s spokesman Taher Al-Baghli, state police did not charge the stateless for ‘illegal protesting’ only because such a charge will most probably be dismissed by the higher court.

Since the first trial started, the stateless community had several attempts to protest again. Activists tried to get permissions to protest in Erada square, in front of the parliament, where protests took place in the past two months against former prime minister Nasser Al-Mohammed which led to his resignation. The interior ministry refused to give such permission which made some of the stateless protest in their poorly-conditioned areas. The number was not large and protesters left in response to calls from some activists to avoid clashes.

This Friday, as reported by activists, tweeps, and news agencies, riot police used violence against stateless protesters and more than 20 men were arrested, among them two journalists who were later released (Fahad Al-Mayah and Hamad Al-Sharhan). According to a report by AFP: “Kuwaiti riot police used tear gas and water cannons on Friday to scatter hundreds of stateless protesters demanding citizenship. The police sought to break up a crowd of 400 people gathered after noon prayers in Jahra, raising Kuwaiti flags and banners that read: We demand Kuwaiti citizenship.” Stateless activist Mousaed Al-Shammari was reportedly arrested as he was trying to convince protesters to leave. Some wrote that he is now on hunger strike protesting his detention. According to a report by Reuters, there were also minors beaten and arrested in Friday protest. 

* Published in MidEast Youth

Undocumented and Afraid

They took them in, shackled their brown hands, threaded out their thick hair, and told them “We will now turn you into soldiers, fighting against hope, warring against life. You have two choices: death or death.” They stared at the hours, then removed their eyes, hanging each upon its nail. Then they waited and waited for the funeral of memory to start. They set the light on fire and recited myths, fairytales, and stories about their fathers, their stupid fathers, who were once heroes and are now nothing but cowards.

Why did you leave us in this trap without any poems? Why did you color the sky yellow? Why did you give us stars to hang our hearts on? We did not do anything, we only wanted to sing. We have read the Quran, the New Testament, and the Old Testament. We read every verse and we pretended to be religious enough to read, and to know if hope was a sin, and it wasn’t.

In this trap, we recreated time and turned every thousand hours into another day, another attempt to save our youth from the wasteland. On the broken stairs of time we walked and we asked God, “Why didn’t you let us choose our pain—for the pain of waiting is the ugliest kind of heaven. Allow us to choose our own pain for once. If we were permitted to make choices we might begin to think.  And then we might believe, for a second, that we are human.”

“Undocumented and unafraid.” That is what a Hispanic girl wrote on her shirt as an American policeman shackled her hands. I said, “I am undocumented and afraid. And fear is genetic, even if scientists have not yet discovered that fact.” I let my memory sail me off to the shore of my childhood and I remembered that I had books, a soccer ball, and an old lady asking me, “Where are you from?” I paused and said, “I am from Bidun.” She laughed “There’s no such place. No country is Bidun.”

I removed my small feet and drew a flag, a jersey, and a national anthem. Then I waited and hoped, like all my people. I waited and hoped that she would reappear so that I might show her my country. The woman died and I grew up. I killed my imagination even as I continued to practice the sins of hope and waiting. Here, a kid puts his nail in the sand and tries to build a home, but it rained.

Let us live our evenings to the fullest so we might be allowed to imagine that we are what you are—creatures of flesh and blood and rainbows. Give an answer for a mother to say when her child asks her, “Mother, where are we from?” We are the prisoners of yesterday. We make collages out of the Yellow Pages. We like to be pawns since we are not allowed to die just like our fathers who fought, died, and went forgotten in a truck, a grave, or a sandstorm.

Our children have no kites; for we have no wind to fly them, no money to buy them, and no sky. Our children take the road to the mosque and make their prayers. “Oh god, I do not want to take the same road again, not because I do not love you but because I want to take the road to school.” We will love life one day we will one day hope again without the fear of losing our nails.

We will take no portion of your ego, we will always bend our heads when we see you in the streets. We will buy hats if we need to, just so we might take them off when we see you, just so you feel secure in your self while your cars run, and our heads bend. Let us offer you three hats for every slap your policeman draws on a man’s face, and for every horror he puts in a teenage heart, or in a girl’s breast.

We are lonely but our loneliness does not bring us together. Our fathers shook off their tents. They hid their pride in their pockets. They pointed towards you and said, “Let us join our brothers; let us go home.” And when they arrived, they heard a word, and they opened their dictionaries under the letter “e” and read “enemy.” We waited, in the yellow bus, for our brothers to take us home. The bus was a candle. The bus melted under the sun. The sun died. And we made chairs out of our hope, we sat, and we waited.

Let us be whatever you want us to be—your trains, your music, your fleeting smiles, but just let us be. Let us have an answer for the question of life while you solve your question of God, let us be. Let us sing a love story and do not mock our thick accents for we do not have the luxury of your tongues; we have no tongues, no speech, no songs. We are waiting for our mothers to sow our youth and give us the song of salvation. We are waiting for the anti-hope pills that never work.

Make exceptions for us before we die. Let us have a day to build a house near the schools. Let us watch our children be happy and complain about their teachers. Let us see them burn with the fire of knowledge. Let us frame our losses and crucify them on the imaginary walls. Let the father see his dead son and sigh, “Now who is going to bury me?” Let us buy new chairs, let us have chairs first, let us have the choice to take off our hats for you, or not to take them off. Let us have shadows, ghosts, and more fears.

I do not hate you but I do not love you. I look at you and I know. I know that my heart is not like the size of your shoe. Pardon me, but I cannot lie. My whole existence is a lie and I, once and for all, blame my fathers for being lies. You do not allow me to wait, hope, or live and I do not allow you to make me lie. We are the statues on which you will build your birdhouses.

Published in Jadaliyya - 12/12/2011

Pictures from the Statelessness conference

word

On my left, famous stateless Dominican- Haitian activist Sonia Pierre speaking

Next to Maria Otero, US under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs

Reading of my speech about the stateless of Kuwait

* Pictures taken, with permission, from MOSCTHA.

Les Biduns, sans patrie chez eux

Luxembourg's Le Jeudi has invited me to contribute for their weekly section "Carte postale du printemps arabe" that attracts young Arabs to write postcards about what is going in their country in relation to the Arab Spring. My postcard was about the Bidun (Stateless) of Kuwait and below you can read it in French:


Imaginez l'espace d'une minute que vous n'avez pas de droit de disposer d'un document attestant de votre naissance, votre décès, votre mariage ou votre divorce. Imaginez que votre père a sacrifié sa vie pour la liberation de votre pays, mais que vous n'êtes pas reconnu dans ce pays.
Imaginez que l'on vous considère comme "illégal" et apatride dans le pays même où vous et votre famille évoluez depuis trois générations. Imaginez que vous n'avez aucun accès à l'enseignement officiel public, aucun accès à aux soins médicaux, aucun accès à l'emploi.
Imaginez que vous n'avez pas de passeport, de carte d'identité ou de permis de conduire. Pouvez-vous imaginer que tout ceci vous arrive mais que
personne ne peut vous l'expliquer?
C'est précisément cela qu'être bidun au Koweït – "Bidun" voulant dire apatride.
Il y a plus de 100.000 de telles personnes vivant au Koweït dans des conditions de pauvreté extrême, privées de tous leurs droits fondamentaux et ne pouvant aller nulle part ailleurs, uniquement parce qu'elles sont nées et ont grandi dans nul autre pays que celui-ci.
Grâce au printemps arabe, les femmes et les hommes sans patrie du Koweït ont pu constater que le silence ne leur apportait aucun avantage et ont décidé qu'ils devraient descendre dans la rue. Cela est arrivé en février et mars dernier.
Mais ils furent dispersés par la brutalité policière, par les arrestations, par les interrogatoires et par la torture, en dépit du fait qu'ils manifestaient pacifiquement, en petits groupes, arborant le drapeau national et des portraits des dirigeants du Koweït.
Il y a un mois, les sans-patrie du Koweït se sont rendu compte de l'importance des
réseaux sociaux. Ils ont lance une campagne de trois jours sur Twitter appelée "Retournez votre avatar" pour attire l'attention des médias et du monde sur leur cause. Tout récemment, ils ont lancé une autre champagne qui consiste à lâcher des "ballons de la liberté", aussi pour attirer l'attention du monde sur leur conditions de vie.
Ils mettent en oeuvre ces moyens d'expression très pacifiques malgré le fait que beaucoup d'entre eux n'ont accès ni à un emploi, ni à une scolarisation, ni même à ce qui est le plus important, à savoir la dignité humaine. Les Bidun du Koweït sont en train d'être déshumanisés et, plus dangereusement, négligés par le monde et les médias.

Mais, pour citer Gloria Steinem, une des leaders des feminists américains: "We shall overcome" ("Nous surmonterons").

Mona --
LE JEUDI DE L'ÉTÉ
- 4 août 2011

The Bidun of Kuwait: A Look behind the Laws

A photo of Kuwaiti riot police beating a Bidun protester. Image from author's archive]

In Kuwait, some young Bidun men and women often wonder what more they could offer the country to get accepted as one of its own. Their fathers had lost their lives liberating Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion in the 1990 Gulf War. Their ancestors had settled in Kuwait for three consecutive generations but Bidun today have yet to be afforded any state recognition. Other Bidun question when they will become “pure enough” in the eyes of the Kuwaiti state and society to get recognized as equal humans, if not citizens.

There are 120,000 Bidun jinsiyya (without nationality) in Kuwait today suffering from the lack of political, economic and human rights. None of them can legally obtain birth, death, marriage or divorce certificates. The same applies to driving licenses, identification cards, and passports. Bidun have no access to public education, health care, housing, social security or employment. And while they face some of the state’s harshest discrimination policies, they have no recourse to the law and its courts. Simply stated, the Bidun, who are equal to about 10% of the Kuwaiti population, do not exist. They have been dehumanized and rendered invisible by government policies coupled with pervasive social stigmatization.

Those in positions of power and their allies have used the same excuses to prevent the Bidun from being granted Kuwaiti citizenship and given their civil and human rights. They argue that the Bidun are of Iraqi origins and have hidden their real identification documents in order to get Kuwaiti citizenship and enjoy the benefits of the welfare state. Cruder, everyday conversations characterize them as “uncivilized and savage bedouins” who do not represent the “modern” and more “refined” culture of Kuwaiti society. The Bidun are portrayed as disloyal subjects who are culturally different and thus do not deserve Kuwaiti citizenship.

Several reporters and international organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, and others have been working on furthering the cause of the Bidun. While they have tried to increase societal awareness of the Bidun, little is known of their miserable living conditions, and pervasive societal discrimination against them persists. The recent protests of Bidun in Sulaibiya, Taimaa, and Ahmadi that started on February 18^th, 2011 and called for granting the Bidun citizenship have attracted more attention now than in the past due to regional revolutions and uprisings. Around one thousand persons are said to have gathered in all the protests combined to demand rights that the Kuwaiti government has long denied them.

In line with the suppression of protests in the Gulf and other states, Kuwaiti security forces responded to the Bidun demonstrators with violence. They used water cannons, teargas, smoke bombs, and concussion grenades to disperse the protesters. According to Human Rights Watch, over thirty people were injured and 120 were detained by state security in the first day of Bidun protests. The Interior Ministry puts the latter number at forty-two. Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Hamoud al-Sabah accused the protesters of assembling without prior government notice, and said that they would all be released after investigations were finalized. On March 12^th, the Kuwait Human Rights association demanded the release of all detained protesters. Rumors suggest that most of the detainees have been released.

In the aftermath of the protests, the Kuwaiti government and some parliament members announced their commitment to reform laws that pertain to the Bidun. However, like previous promises, they have so far been empty ones. The parliamentary sessions that took place after the protests discussed the rights of the Bidun to get birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates. So far, these discussions have not materialized into actual legal rights. As a result, the Bidun have taken to the streets again on March 12^th, 2011, this time demanding full citizenship rights and not only civil documents.

Kuwaiti media and popular reactions to these protests have been especially disturbing for many in the Bidun community. Kuwaiti newspapers—which are mostly owned by old money Kuwaiti families—were quick to criticize the protests because they oppose the naturalization of the Bidun. Newspapers and television channels alike have accused the hundreds of peaceful Bidun protesters of throwing stones at the police, claiming it was the reason that led to the “clashes” between the police and protesters. Kuwaiti media, however, has condemned the violence used by the Interior Ministry against parliament members and activists who held an informal gathering to discuss “Preserving the Kuwaiti Constitution” in December 2010.

It seems that Kuwaiti newspapers are currently doing the government’s bidding when it comes to the Bidun. As part of a recent media campaign, newspapers have been trying to establish that the Bidun did not take to the streets to fight for their civil rights. Rather, that they did so because the Kuwaiti government was cooperating with its Iraqi counterpart to reveal the Biduns’ real identities in order to deport them. Such media depictions have led to increased anti-Bidun sentiments in Kuwait, with many Kuwaitis now sanctioning the use of force against Bidun demonstrators. Popular anti-Bidun sentiments and reactions cannot be ascertained on state television or through the printed press. However, hate speech and stereotyping of the Bidun minority have become more common in everyday life here and easily found on online blogs and social networking sites.

The way the media has sided against the Bidun protests is not surprising. Many Kuwaitis continue to harbor feelings of resentment at the government for granting citizenship to a certain Saudi tribe in the 1970's, an act that has skewed parliamentary elections. Some Kuwaitis believe that these 'newcomers' were used to politically support and empower certain individuals over others. The Kuwaiti media’s position towards the Bidun can also be explained by a different perspective: "If this minority does not benefit us in any way, why not favor the government this time by siding with it against the Bidun". Consequently, they burn a card once, and then can use the Bidun card at a later time to balance the media-regime relationship.

These are critical times in Kuwait. Events in Bahrain have incited sectarian discrimination amongst all Kuwaitis. Certain newspapers have addressed the Bahrain protests through a sectarian lens, most notably the Al-Watan newspaper, which has caused several sectarian incidents in Kuwait in the past. In a recent incident, Al Watan carried an article that pointed out and condemned the video of Yaser Al-Habib, a Shi’a who was shown cursing Aysha, the wife of prophet Mohamed. This led the Kuwaiti government to strip him of his citizenship.

Kuwaiti society also features class and status-based discrimination as they have always been practiced against the Bidun and other Kuwaiti communities. The pro-Bidun Kuwaiti activists, politicians and writers are making a big mistake by failing to point out these practices of discrimination in Kuwait. Instead, they keep focusing on debating and demanding the implementation of the laws and rules to help solve this long-standing problem. While addressing the importance of implementing these laws is crucial, it makes little sense to do so without first raising public awareness on the status and living conditions of the Bidun. Otherwise, the government and its allies can easily abuse public ignorance in order to get the green light to further oppress the Bidun or other minorities in the future.

Mona Kareem - Jadaliyya