Friday, January 05, 2018

"Draft laws ready to resolve the bedoon issue"


Every few years, the parliament makes a statement about naturalizing 4000 stateless (no-nationality people - many of whom have been born in Kuwait or have generations of family members born in Kuwait for as long as the the country has been an official country).  They're called, "Bedoon" meaning "without" in Arabic - a shorter version of "bedoon jinseeya" or "without nationality." Not to be confused with Bedouin.

Anyways, today's Kuwait Times:











Such BS.  They bring it up  They drop it.  I was particularly chuffed about the idea to give all Bedoon citizenship to the Comoros Islands nation.  (Yeah....ok.....)

Amazon sells a very good book called, " Kuwait: The Bedoons of Kuwait "Citizens Without Citizenship" It was written by a group of people from Human Rights Watch.  The book (written in 1995) also mentions the governments "plans" to naturalize 4000 Bedoons per year. How many have actually been naturalized since then?

(I don't know who came up with the original plan for 4,000... why not 5,000?  Who knows.)

But don't take my word for it:   Plenty of objective organizations have come to Kuwait to document the issue.  Like Refugees International and others.

I will get comments from people saying that Bedoon are all Iraqis who came here seeking a better life (in their words "trying to get money") during or following the invasion.  "What do you know?  You're just a foreigner!?"  'Yo homey, what do you know,  you're just 26.'  I will happily delete those comments from youngsters who have a one-sided view and should read more/listen less in their diwaniya or from bigots who infect more bigots.

Let the entire country of Kuwait do the DNA test!  DO IT.  Find out where you're all really from!  I dare ya.  23andme can tell you for $99.  And Kuwait being a port for centuries, I'm guessing it's not going to all be what you thought.

I also urge foreign embassy workers to look into this issue.  Don't take the word/perspective of one group of people - educate yourselves.  Maybe even talk to some Bedoon people and learn first-hand of their experiences.




1 comment:

.... said...

23andme puts half of the middle east into north african category from Palestine to Yemen so their results can be misleading , as far i remember middle east there was based on Lebanese, Syrian ,Turkish and Caucasian samples.