KUWAIT

Human Rights Developments

The year was marked by intensified persecution of those minority communities whose loyalty to the government was in doubt, especially Iraqis, Palestinians and Bedoons, the stateless longtime residents of Kuwait. After a year of relatively reduced tensions in 1992, the discovery in April of an alleged plot by Iraqi agents to assassinate former U.S. President George Bush during his visit to Kuwait that month sparked renewed pressure on those communities. The Kuwaiti government accelerated its long-term strategy of restructuring its population in a fashion that violated human rights, through arbitrary arrests and summary deportations. Those suspected of collaboration with the Iraqi government were either expelled or tried before the State Security Court, where defendants' rights are limited. Seven Iraqis and ten Palestinians were sentenced to death and, in May, another Iraqi, sentenced to death in 1992, was executed.

The government continued its effective ban on peaceful assembly and association. In August, the authorities closed down all unlicensed associations; the ban order included six human rights and humanitarian organizations.

Despite requests from human rights groups and families of those killed, disappeared or tortured in the post-liberation, martial-law period (February through June 1991), only a handful of such cases had been investigated. More than two years after a vicious attack on one Lebanese family resident in Kuwait city, a Kuwaiti official was charged in April 1993 with the crime of killing Ismael Farhat and his son Osama, and the rape and attempted murder of Naimat Farhat, his daughter. This was the first time aKuwaiti government official had been tried for a human rights violation taking place during the martial-law period following the liberation of Kuwait in February 1991. With this notable exception, none of those implicated in the killing and torture of hundreds of prisoners were brought to justice. Kuwaiti officials told Middle East Watch that they had no plans to launch any further investigations of officials. In addition, mass unidentified graves of people buried after the war-apparent victims of Kuwaiti forces-remained to be exhumed.

During 1993, continuing a process begun immediately after liberation, the State Security Court tried scores of Iraqis, Palestinians and Bedoons charged with collaboration with the Iraqi occupying forces. Although the procedures followed in their trials were an improvement over those of the 1991 martial-law courts, serious shortcomings remained, including the use of confessions obtained through torture and the denial of legal counsel of the defendants' own choosing. The court often ignored the reasonable assertion of many defendants that they had been coerced into cooperating with the occupation authorities. Collaboration was defined by the prosecution to include many forms of minor association with the occupiers. All defendants before the court were charged under the broadly worded State Security Law of 1970, which imposed a mandatory death penalty on a wide range of crimes, including, for example, the peaceful expression of opinion, if it is deemed harmful to national morale.

In June, the State Security Court sentenced six Iraqis and ten Palestinians to death for collaboration. The six Iraqis were charged with belonging to the Ba`th Party, the ruling party in Iraq, and joining the Popular Army, a reserve militia which assisted the occupying forces. The ten Palestinians were charged with belonging to the Arab Liberation Front, a Baghdad-based faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) financed and sponsored by Iraq, and with carrying arms in support of the occupation. The defendants had been detained since the first months following liberation, when most detainees held on suspicion of collaboration were tortured. The court did not fully consider their claims that their early confessions had been secured through torture. None was allowed legal counsel before the trial, in violation of both Kuwaiti law and international standards.

On June 25, trial commenced before the State Security Court of eleven Iraqis and three Kuwaitis accused of plotting to assassinate former U.S. President Bush. The eleven Iraqis and one of the Kuwaitis faced the death penalty. During the proceedings, several defendants recanted their earlier confessions, which they said had been obtained through the use of torture. Ali Khudair, a sixty-eight-year old Iraqi defendant, told the court that he had been severely beaten by investigators to compel him to confess to the plot. Wali al-Ghazali and Ra`ad al-Asadi also maintained that they made their confessions after they had been subjected to torture, signs of which were clearly visible when they appeared in court. Although most of the accused faced the death penalty, all but one of the fourteen defendants were denied legal counsel until their first court appearance. Sentencing was scheduled for December 25.

Policies aimed at eventually expelling from Kuwait nearly all of its remaining Iraqi, Palestinian and Bedoon residents included arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, unlawful searches, heavy fines, threats, public humiliation and the denial of employment. During 1993, hundreds were arrested and placed in the Talha Deportation Prison and then given a choice between leaving voluntarily or remaining in that makeshift detention facility. This prison was the subject of a scathing parliamentary report about its deteriorating conditions and overcrowding. In June, Talha's inmates began a hunger strike to call attention to their plight. To dramatize the dismal conditions, six detainees-former Iraqi prisoners of war who were classified as refugees by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)-sewed shut their mouths. Promises by Prime Minister Shaikh Sa`ad, who visited the facility in June, to improve conditions and relocate inmates from this facility to a more suitable building were not fulfilled. Faced with these conditions and no prospect of release, most of those detained chose to leave the country. They had to liquidate their assets quickly and use the proceeds to pay fines for residing in the country beyond August 1992, at a daily rate of two Kuwaiti dinars ($6.66). In the cases of former government employees, funds owed to them such as severance pay were used to satisfy those fines.

During the year, Kuwaiti authorities escalated pressure on the Bedoons to secure citizenshipelsewhere in order for them to remain in Kuwait lawfully. Most Bedoons are long-term stateless residents of Kuwait who were born there and have lived there all their lives, but are not officially deemed to qualify for Kuwaiti citizenship. The pre-war community of 250,000 was estimated in 1993 at under 200,000 (according to official figures, only 120,000 Bedoons remained).

After Kuwait's liberation in 1991, long-standing anti-Bedoon policies took a violent turn. Accused en masse of aiding the Iraqi occupying forces, Bedoons were singled out for retribution, even though many had been killed by the Iraqi occupiers for acts of resistance. Bedoons suffered summary execution, disappearance and torture. All those employed by the government were dismissed from their jobs, prevented from sending their children to government schools and threatened with expulsion from the only country they had ever known. The military and the police, which before the invasion were largely composed of Bedoons, rehired only a small fraction of their pre-war employees-depriving the community of its chief source of income.

Most of the Palestinians who remained in Kuwait-fewer than 25,000, down from a pre-war high of over 350,000-were stateless refugees who came originally from the Gaza Strip but had not been allowed by Israel to return. They carried travel documents issued by Egypt, which refused to allow them to reside in its territory. Although these refugees had no place to go, Kuwaiti authorities denied them the right to remain in Kuwait until they found another country that would accept them. They were harassed, threatened with imprisonment, denied employment, and subjected to heavy fines for every day they stayed in Kuwait. Many exhausted their life savings to pay these fines.

In 1993, the Kuwaiti government ignored appeals by families and human rights organizations to retry or grant appeal to 118 persons sentenced by martial-law tribunals set up in May and June 1991. In those show trials, most defendants were convicted and sentenced on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Another vulnerable group of foreign residents subjected to violent mistreatment was Asian domestic employees, mainly from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh; their number was estimated at about 150,000 in 1993. Expressly excluded from the protection of labor legislation, these workers had been left at the mercy of their private employers. Their legal recourse severely limited, hundreds of abused Asian expatriates sought refuge in their respective embassies, charging their employers with rape, physical assault or withholding wages. Some 1,400 Filipina maids fled to their embassy in the year between April 1991 and April 1992. In 1993, several hundred runaway maids sought shelter in foreign embassies, notably that of the Philippines. In the spring, about four hundred maids, mostly from the Philippines, were repatriated, but by the end of October, hundreds more were sheltered in various Asian embassies. Only one case of an abusive employer was successfully tried: on July 24, a Kuwaiti and his Lebanese wife were sentenced to seven years each for causing the death of Sonia Panama, a twenty-three-year-old Filipina maid through ill-treatment.

The lifting of pre-publication censorship on newspapers in early 1992, although welcome, did not mark a trend toward greater freedom of expression. During 1993, the government continued to prosecute reporters who wrote critically of its policies. It also maintained other severe restrictions on peaceful expression, assembly and association. Since 1985, the Kuwaiti government had maintained a moratorium on the formation of new private groups, but in practice had allowed many to function without formal licenses. However, in 1993 this policy of benign neglect was abandoned. On August 6, the Council of Ministers issued a decree dissolving all unlicensed organizations, affecting all those groups engaged in human rights and humanitarian activities. Most had been formed since the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 but had not been formally legalized, despite their repeated requests.

Although the order was directed at all unlicensed organizations, in justifying the need for action government officials cited only human rights and humanitarian organizations, especially those working on the issue of those who disappeared during the Iraqi occupation of 1990 and 1991. The government singled out the Kuwaiti Association for the Defense of War Victims, the country's main human rights group, as being required to close down. All unlicensed groups were notified to cease operation and, on August 15, the Minister of Social Affairs threatened to use force against violators. On October 3, theCouncil of Ministers instructed the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor to implement the ban immediately.

While the parliament resumed functioning in 1992, the royal family continued its dominance of the executive branch. On October 5, 1992, elections for the National Assembly were held for the first time since it was dissolved by the Emir in July 1986. Only 81,400 first-class male citizens over the age of twenty-one were eligible to vote, accounting for less than 11 percent of the native population. Women and naturalized citizens did not have the right to vote, nor did the Bedoons.

However, the restoration of the National Assembly did not mean the beginning of parliamentary rule. Although the opposition and independent candidates gained a majority of the fifty contested seats, the majority's power was significantly curtailed when the Emir once again asked Crown Prince Shaikh Sa`ad to form a new government. The new cabinet, announced on October 14, 1992, was composed mostly of government loyalists, including five members of the royal family who retained the posts prime minister and first deputy prime minister, as well as the key portfolios of defense, foreign affairs, information and interior.

Although the success of independent candidates in gaining a majority in the National Assembly did not usher in parliamentary rule, deputies began in 1993 to assert their independence. They investigated reports of corruption and mismanagement of public funds during the six years (July 1986 through October 1992) when the parliament was dissolved-investigations that led to the indictment of several former officials, including members of the royal family. In addition, the assembly, for the first time in Kuwait's parliamentary history, formed two committees to deal exclusively with human rights. The Human Rights Committee conducted hearings on prison conditions and, in January 1993, conducted a surprise visit to the Talha Deportation prison. Following the hearing, the Prime Minister visited the prison and, in June, promised to relocate its inmates to a more appropriate facility. In July, the Human Rights Committee adopted a scathing (classified) report on the visit and urged the government to improve conditions there.

Until it resigned in August, the Assembly's Committee on POWs and the Hostages had become one of the most important parliamentary groups. It dealt almost exclusively with the issue of the 850 Kuwaitis (and others) who disappeared during Iraq's seven-month occupation of Kuwait (August 1990 to February 1991). The committee, headed by Deputy Mubarak al-Duwaila, supported private efforts to assist in securing information about their whereabouts. It introduced measures, later adopted by the full assembly, to urge the government to recognize and assist private groups in the country dealing with the issue of the disappeared. On August 17, this committee resigned en masse in protest of the government's decision to close down private groups dealing with the subject.

The second session of the 1992 National Assembly convened on October 26, 1993, amid growing competition between Islamist and secular deputies over the future direction of Kuwait, including the issue of how to treat human rights. In the first session, which had concluded in September, some Islamist opposition deputies appeared to side with the government's decision to close down human rights and humanitarian organizations, traditionally populated by secular and liberal activists.

The Right to Monitor

The right to monitor was dealt a severe blow with the closure in August of all human rights groups in Kuwait, including the Kuwaiti Association to Defend War Victims (KADWV). Established immediately after the Gulf War, the association had been the main independent local group devoted exclusively to monitoring human rights. The Kuwaiti government, which never formally recognized the organization's legal existence, announced in August that KADWV and the other human rights and humanitarian groups were illegal since they had not been licensed. On October 3, the government reiterated its decision to close down all unlicensed private associations.

KADWV and some of the other banned groups nevertheless continued to function and meet privately. As in previous years, a focal point for KADWV in 1993 was the fate of over 850 Kuwaitisand others who disappeared during Iraqi occupation. The organization also followed the fate of those who disappeared or went missing after liberation, mainly Palestinians and Bedoons; and it provided aid, including legal counsel, to prisoners and victims of official abuse.

Included in the government's ban were five other human rights and humanitarian groups. These were the Kuwaiti Association for Human Rights, League of Families of POWs and the Missing, Mutual Assistance Fund for the Families of the Martyrs and POWs, Popular Committee for Solidarity with POWs, Pro-Democracy Committee, Supporters of Single-Citizenship Committee, and Women Married to Non-Kuwaitis Support Association.

In 1993, the Kuwaiti government allowed visits by several international human rights organizations, but significant delays in granting approval were reported. Most non-Kuwaiti lawyers who volunteered to travel to Kuwait to represent those accused of state security offenses were not granted entry visas by Kuwaiti embassies without explanation. The few who were able to secure visas were not permitted to represent their clients in court.

U.S. Policy

Since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. has been the main force protecting Kuwait from renewed Iraqi attack. A ten-year military agreement signed in September 1991 regulated the U.S.-Kuwaiti defense alliance. Under this agreement, the stationing of large numbers of land-based troops was eschewed in favor of maintaining a substantial naval presence nearby and holding frequent U.S.-Kuwaiti maneuvers. These exercises amounted to a semi-permanent presence in light of their frequency, their duration and the large number of troops involved. According to U.S. Defense Department officials, these exercises and the September 1991 agreement itself were intended as both a signal to Iraq and a demonstration of U.S. commitment to the security of Kuwait and stability of the Gulf. Similar agreements were concluded with France and the United Kingdom.

The U.S. continued to provide sophisticated weapons to Kuwait, during the year under review, with sales of tanks and fighter planes totalling over $1 billion. U.S. officials expressed their belief that the defense of Kuwait, as part of the defense of the Arabian Peninsula, was one of two key policy goals in the Middle East-the other being peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors. In April, David L. Mack, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, explained that Arab-Israeli peace was sought, in part, to "assure the security of this vital region." "Over the long term, peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors is essential to our continuing effort to encourage and help provide a credible defense of the Arabian Peninsula," Mack told the U.S. - GCC Business Conference in Washington. During visits by Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Secretary Christopher reasserted longstanding U.S. policy. In February, he told Kuwaiti and Saudi leaders: "President Clinton's commitment to the security of friends in the Gulf, like that of every president since Franklin Roosevelt, is firm and constant," according to a statement by the State Department. There was no public reference to human rights during those visits.

The need to put an end to human rights violations committed by Iraq in Kuwait was one of the stated reasons that the U.S. administration went to war against Iraq. However, other than cataloguing human rights abuses in Kuwait, in the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, U.S. officials shied away from publicly criticizing the serious human rights violations committed by Kuwaiti authorities against foreign and Bedoon residents. This reticence, which persisted during 1993, came despite what most Kuwaitis acknowledged to be their near-complete reliance on the U.S. to protect them from external threats.

In what may have been an effort to downplay human rights as a component of policy, the ranking Clinton administration official for the region described the U.S. relationship with Gulf countries as a purely commercial one. According to Mack, "I like to think of the ties between the U.S. and GCC as being based on a logic as ancient as that of the oriental bazaar, or souq. Simply put, the interests of the merchant in the bazaar and of his regular customers are complementary. If another party impeded orprevents the free and peaceful exchange of goods, or attempts to establish terms of trade through intimidation or extortion, both merchant and customer suffer."

By contrast to the State Department's assiduous efforts to help U.S. businesses who had problems or disputes in Kuwait, on human rights the U.S. refrained from taking the initiative: "We look instead to government and private sector leaders to devise, in consultation with their peoples, measures for democratic consensus building that flow naturally from their own established political traditions and cultural values," said Mack. The U.S. official reported, however, that, during his trip to Kuwait, Secretary Christopher had "applauded the reinstitution of the Kuwaiti parliament and encouraged the Kuwaiti government's consideration of expanding the electorate."

The Work of Middle East Watch

In 1993, Middle East Watch focused on advocacy to improve the observance of human rights in Kuwait, engaging in substantive discussions with Kuwaiti officials over human rights issues. It provided information to U.S. congressional staff, U.N. agencies and other groups investigating various aspects of the human rights situation in Kuwait. It also briefed immigration officials and refugee aid groups to help them deal with a flood of refugees from Kuwait pressured to leave or banned from returning.

To help especially vulnerable stateless refugees-Palestinians and Bedoons-stranded outside Kuwait, Middle East Watch filed a substantial number of affidavits and appeals to immigration officials and judges in Canada, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland and the United States.

When the State Security Court sentenced sixteen men to death in June, Middle East Watch protested the sentences and called for a full judicial review of the verdicts, in an open letter to the Emir of Kuwait. The June 24 letter was covered extensively in the Kuwaiti media. In August, when the Kuwaiti government banned all unlicensed organizations, targeting especially human rights and humanitarian groups, Middle East Watch sent an open letter to the Crown Prince protesting the action; the following month it issued a newsletter on the subject.