A Victory Turned Sour

Following the liberation of Kuwait, the thirst to avenge the horrors of the Iraqi occupation spawned a new round of human rights victims this time at Kuwaiti hands. Despite calls to defend human rights in rallying support for the war against Iraq, the reinstated Kuwaiti government has trampled on those rights at nearly every turn, often with the use of violence. Murder, torture, arbitrary detention, and unlawful deportation have been the tools of this campaign of vengeance. The pretext for these abuses is a government-inspired quest to root out those who collaborated with the Iraqi occupiers and to restructure Kuwaiti society in a fashion that is deemed more reliable politically. The victims, almost uniformly long-term residents of Kuwait, are principally Palestinians, Iraqis, and the stateless Arabs known as Bedoons.