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| Kuwaiti police arrest a man during a protest by stateless people yesterday |
Known in Arabic as “bidoon” and numbering up to 180,000 people, the stateless are denied citizenship under nationality laws in Kuwait, whose citizens are entitled to generous welfare benefits.
Kuwait has avoided any major spillover of the “Arab Spring” pro-democracy revolts onto its territory. But a deadlock between parliament and the government and accusations of graft by the ex-prime minister have stirred unrest.
Police over the past year have also broken up several marches of stateless demonstrators that attracted several hundred people in marginalised neighbourhoods near the capital. Gathering in a square on Kuwait City’s outskirts after prayers in a nearby mosque, yesterday’s demonstrators called on the country’s ruler to grant them citizenship.
“We want this from your highness the emir, not the government, not the ministers,” the mainly young men chanted as helicopters circled overhead.
Masked police dressed in black and wielding long batons charged the group and led away a handful of protesters.
Most of the other demonstrators ran into the surrounding residential areas crammed with squat corrugated metal houses lined by dirt roads.