http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=Mzg2NTgyMDgx
Headline News Riot police tear-gas protesting bedoons Published Date: February 20, 2011 KUWAIT: Kuwaiti riot police used teargas to disperse hundreds of stateless Arabs who demonstrated for the second day yesterday to demand basic rights and citizenship. Police arrested dozens from around 300 protesters who had gathered in Sulaibiya to press for their demands. On Friday, at least five people were wounded and local media said as many as 100 protesters were arrested when around 1,000 stateless Arabs, known as bedoons from the Arabic "bedoon jinsiyya" (without nationality), clashed with police in Jahra. Like in Jahra, protesters in Sulaibiya carried Kuwaiti flags and pictures of HH the Amir and also demanded their right to work. Maha Al-Barjas, vice president of the Kuwait Human Rights Society, said seven people had been wounded in the clashes. The bedoons, who are 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 neighbouring countries and they are not entitled to nationality. But the Chairman of the Central System for the Remedy of Status of Illegal Residents (CSRSIR) Saleh Al-Fadhala said yesterday Kuwait has never relinquished its humanitarian responsibility over the "illegal residents" (bedoons). "For a long time the state undertook the mission of providing all humanitarian treatment and services for all residents without exception," Fadhala said in statements to KUNA. The CSRSIR focuses primarily on how to settle the issue of illegal residents through a legal and humanitarian perspective, he said. "The demonstrators claim that they have no access to marriage, birth, death or driving documents, which is not true. No state department fails to produce documents to any illegal residents if they have the necessary requirements," he said. The law ensures provision of educational, healthcare and housing services as well as immigration and marriage documentations and driving and residency licenses for illegal residents under Article 17 (of the residency law), he added. In coordination with the Zakat House, the government launched a charity fund for needy students including the illegal residents, Fadhala said, noting that some 12,000 students benefitted from the fund. The annual allocations for the fund amount to KD 6 million. The government and the Zakat House also co-founded a fund for providing healthcare for needy people including illegal residents. Medical insurance fees, levied from illegal residents, were brought down from KD 50 to KD 5. The Ministry of Health in coordination with Zakat House has issued health insurance cards for needy families. More than 39,000 persons benefited from this service between Sept 2003, and Dec 31, 2009, with the appropriations amounting to KD 1.127 million, he added. On housing welfare, Fadhala said the state made available 4,866 houses for military and police personnel belonging to this category of residents at token rent rates. In addition, military and police personnel who did not get government-funded housing units are entitled to get housing allowance totaling valued at KD two million a year. Under Article 17, the Ministry of Interior issued passports for 32,727 illegal residents in just one and a half years to help them perform haj and umrah and get treatment overseas. The number of marriage and divorce documents issued in the last three years for this segment of people amounted to 10,210, Fadhala disclosed. The Ministry of Health is working with the CSRSIR to issue birth and death documents for illegal residents, he said noting that the number of such documents issued between 2005 and 2010 topped 3,608 while 12,471 applicants failed to show up at the ministry to receive their documents which are ready. The Zakat House offers monthly cash aid amounting to KD 5 million to 10,923 families including 55,278 persons along with assistance to illegal residents in the form of foodstuff, clothes and stationery items amounting to KD 618,000 to 3,180 families comprising of 22,260 persons, he added. We are doing our utmost to solve the problems of the illegal residents once and for all," Fadhala said.Kuwait launched a crackdown on the bedoons in 2000, depriving them of basic rights including the right to health, education and jobs, in a bid to force them to reveal what the authorities say are their true identities. Many bedoons have no right to a driver's licence, 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 government restrictions, a majority of them are living in dire economic conditions Kuwait, where the average monthly salary of native citizens is more than KD 1,000 ($3,500). Authorities said that following the crackdown, some 20,000 bedoons disclosed their original citizenship and were given residence permits like other foreigners. Most bedoons claim to be Kuwaitis whose forefathers, who lived as bedouins in the desert, failed to apply for citizenship when the state first introduced its nationality law in 1959. Kuwaiti MPs have called on the government to quickly resolve the problem of bedoons and Kuwait's society for human rights called in a statement yesterday for the release of detainees. - Agencies [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: prole...@egroups.com Subscribe : proletar-subscr...@egroups.com Unsubscribe : proletar-unsubscr...@egroups.com List owner : proletar-ow...@egroups.com Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: proletar-dig...@yahoogroups.com proletar-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: proletar-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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