Posts Tagged ‘Kuwait’
January 16th, 2012
The
Kuwait government
has supported the suppression of “stateless” protesters by security forces over the weekend.
Protests demanding citizenship rights turned violent, and riot police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse protesters.
A statement issued after Kuwait’s weekly cabinet meeting said: “The council of ministers expresses its backing and support for the measures being taken by the interior ministry to … confront all forms of violence.” The statement also said that only ”enemies of Kuwait” benefited from such unrest. Dozens were wounded and over 100 arrested during the protests.
September 26th, 2011
Sunni activist Mubarak al-Bathali has been
sentenced to three months in jail by a
Kuwaiti court for comments about Shiite Muslims made on his Twitter account. A few weeks ago, he was arrested by secret police, and charged with “undermining national unity” as well as “disparaging Shiites”.
January 11th, 2011
The Kuwaiti satellite channel Mubasher and newspaper Al-Mustaqbal, both owned by Shaikh Fahd Salem Al Ali have been
banned by the country’s ministry of commerce on a request by the ministry of information.
The ministry of commerce cited ”irregularities” as reason for the closures, however the
Arabic Network for Human Rights alleges that the real reason is the broadcast of anti-government seminars and demonstrations by the channel.
December 14th, 2010
Al Jazeera’s office in Kuwait City has been
shut down after the news channel broadcast footage of police brutality against members of the Kuwaiti opposition. The footage showed police beating activists, and the channel aired interviews with members of the Kuwaiti opposition. Four Kuwaiti members of parliament and a dozen citizens were injured in the incident. The official reason for the closure given to Al Jazeera was “the latest developments and your interference in Kuwait’s internal affairs”. Al Jazeera’s Kuwait office was previously closed in November 2002 in the run-up to the US led invasion of Iraq.
August 3rd, 2010
Kuwait has asked BlackBerry’s Canadian maker RIM to
block pornographic sites though they will not
suspend the messenger services like their Gulf neighbours.
RIM have agreed to block 3,000 porn sites and have promised to do so by the end of this year.
July 16th, 2010
A court in Kuwait City has
acquitted a journalist prosecuted for insulting Kuwait’s Prime Minister. Journalist
Mohammed Abdel Qader Al-Jassem and activist Khaled Al-Fadala, had their charges dropped on 12 July . Al-Jassem was accused of libelling the prime minister on a talk show entitled “Who is to blame, the government or the parliament?”. Al-Fadala’s case was initiated following an official complaint from the prime minister following the activist’s claim that the prime minister was an “enemy of freedom of expression” in Kuwait. Al-Jassem was jailed after he was convicted of
slander in April 2010 in a separate case.
June 11th, 2010
On 9 June, hundreds of Kuwaitis attend a rally to
call for the release of opposition journalist and lawyer
Mohammed Abdel Qader Al-Jassem. Accused of harming the national interest and undermining the Kuwaiti ruler, al-Jassem has been held in detention for over a month. He was sentenced to six months in prison after he authored a number of articles and books critical of the local political situation.
May 18th, 2010
A Kuwaiti journalist was
hospitalised over the weekend after refusing medication and beginning a hunger strike in protest at his 11 May arrest. Government critic, Mohammed Abdel Qader al-Jassem, claims he was arrested for political reasons. The
national security ministry has been interrogating the journalist and reviewing every blog post he has written in the past five years. He was sentenced to six months in prison in
April for slandering Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, though the decision was later suspended pending an appeal.
