Bedoon Rights is an online community founded by Kuwaiti-stateless advocate Mona Kareem. The network is the only online reference in English devoted for the case of statelessness in Kuwait providing relevant official documents translated, reports made by international organizations, daily reporting, videos, photos, and offering help to journalists, correspondents, and bloggers interested in spotting the light on the stateless struggle in Kuwait by offering information, on-ground guidance, and setting up relevant interviews. We had a chance to catch up with Mona to learn more about Bedoon Rights.
What is BedoonRights.org and why did you start it?
Bedoon Rights is a group of Bedoon activists who want the world to know about their situation in details. We have noticed that media either neglects our case that effects more than 100,000 people in Kuwait or talks about in a very general way and with various mistakes, only whenever we get to have a big protest. We are working daily through the website, social media, videos, and most importantly with partnerships with NGOs.
Who are the 120,000 bedoon people without human rights?
They are people who had problems in registration when Kuwait became independent. Some didn’t register because they lived outside the city, some did but the government kept them waiting for over 5 decades. The government creates stereotypes and lies about our situation by giving wrong information, saying our rights are granted, and that we are hiding our ‘real identities.’ The truth is that it is all discrimination against us and the tribes that most of us belong to. The government passed a shameful bill in 1986 that denies us all documentation: passport, ID, driving license, marriage certificate, death certificate, birth certificate, right to court, right to own a property, education, health care, and employment. Bedoon have been vocal since 2008, as a new generation that felt fed up with excuses, discrimination, and promises. The community started with small groups and with the arab spring, we had a year of on and off protests faced with violence, arrests, and trials.
The bedoon have been discriminated since the 1950’s, why has it taken this long to speak up?
The past two generation were not as effected as the young current generation. They were not denied the right to all the mentioned above things. But those who were born and raised into post-1986 Kuwait’s Bedoon, lived the discrimination and apartheid to its fullest. The activists are all in their 30’s and 40’s with some few exceptions. This generation faced injustice and thus it is the one speaking up. Moreover, the past generations really believed that the solution is a matter of time and that speaking up will get them into trouble. The state surely keeps frightening the community by what is so called “security holds” which is basically a missed up way that allows the government to right whatever about a Bedoon person and thus deny him/her the right to citizenship forever with no explanation. It is the law of no laws!
What role has social media played in raising awareness about the Bedoon?
A very crucial role. Bedoon learned from fellow Arabs protesting; how activism is organized. This is our only way to communicate, coordinate, and get information out to the world since local media is working in lobby with authorities, like it has always been.
What is your main goal with the Bedoon Rights initiative?
Documentation. Creating a memory for the community and a voice that speaks the language of citizen journalism and human rights. I have worked for years in both mass media and citizen journalism and I use the experience in favor of this cause. This space is created to get everyone’s attention and therefore pressure the authorities and let them know that their lies won’t pass unchecked and that their lobby with media won’t keep the shouts hidden in the prisons and the streets.
How will you move from awareness to action?
This is getting shaped up gradually especially by the help we offer to foreign media and our partnerships with other NGOs. Kuwait is interested in shining up its international image and the fact that we are active documenting the status of Bedoon visibly, will keep the pressure growing. We aim to be an NGO for the Bedoon; there are already two NGOs abroad, one in the UK and another in Canada and we all aim to use different tools and be more organized. The UK based NGO had a crucial role in encouraging protests back in February 2011 and this tells you how online conversations and writings shape reality. One of the most important things that Bedoon Rights and others succeed in is the way we work on speaking for those arrested since local media write about them wrongly and with no details. We work on the ground and we get the stories out.
What do you want the world to know about Bedoon Rights?
That we need their support and solidarity. This is a fair case in all possible ways. Tens of thousands are living in apartheid, discrimination, no-state, rejected, insulted, arrested, brutalized, and fought in every possible way. This community is of no danger for anyone, yet for reasons of egoism, corruption, hierarchy, class struggle, and discrimination, we are being denied the right to exist in our own country.
When you make the effort to educate yourself about the Bedoon, that by itself is a big favor.
Learn more www.bedoonrights.org
Twitter: @Bedoonrightsorg
Arab apartheid / Muslim apartheid are the largest ‘apartheid systems’, that exist today.
Virtually all non-Arabs and/or non-Muslims are second class citizens. Among minorities that feel the wrath of the bigoted Arab-Muslim world are:
* Berbers (native N. Africans, before Arab invasion: Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco).
* Copts (indigenous Egyptians suffer from both: Arab racism and Islamic bigotry).
* Kurds (Examples include: [Saddam's] Iraq and Syria.
* Blacks, in Arab lands or in Arab ruled Africa like the genocide in the Sudan and slavery in both Sudan and in Mauritania.
* Asians, particularly in the Gulf Arab states. [Sex slaves or "plain" slaves).
* Maronites-Christians [Native Lebanese] suffer from both Arab ethnic racism and religious bigotry, like the massacres in the 1970s by local Muslims and by Palestinian/Syrian forces.
* Assyrians, are/have been persecuted both racially and religiously. Still very much marginalized in Iraq, for example.
* Iran is not an Arab country but racism is huge against Kurds, Jews, Turkmens, etc. So is anti-non-Muslim bigotry against Christians, Bahai, Zoroastrians and other in the Islamic republic.
* Turkey is also a Muslim non-Arab country and Kurds, Greeks, Armenians and other ethnicities have been through much suffering, genocide. Still there’s great wide racism against non-Turkish ethnic groups including racism against Alevis and against Kurds. Turkey’s policy in Cyprus has also been recognized as a real Apartheid by many. All non-Muslims are automatically branded as “foreigners” at the “moderate” Islamic supremacy of Turkey.
* Asians, Christians in both; Indonesia and in Malaysia have long been subject to persecution, race-riots, discrimination, racism and bloodshed.
* Non-Muslims or the ‘wrong kind of Muslims,’ in Pakistan; Iraq; Afghanistan, are oppressed and targeted in deadly attacks.
* All non-Msulims in ‘Islamic Apartheid state’ of S. Arabia.
* Asians [slaves!] in the Gulf Arab states.
* Bedoons in Kuwait.
* Al-Akhdam in Yemen.
* Gypsies in Jordan.
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Islamic-Arab “Palestine” apartheid:
* Ahmadiyya Muslims are harshly persecuted in (Pakistan and in) the “Palestinian” Apartheid authority and/or by Hamas.
* Descendants of slaves of the Bedouins are still stigmatized by racist “Palestinians”.
* Christians are discriminated, persecuted against [especially since Y. Arafat's Islamization of Bethlehem], by Palestine authority and Hamas regime.
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From anti-Jewish Apartheid:
- The Arab racist apartheid against the Jews attempted genocide ever since the 1920s, (Like Mufti of “Palestine” at his incited massacres, and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who called simply ‘to kill Jews’).
- Chased out a Million Jews in the late 1940.
- Has boycotted and demonized [every logical defensive action is branded "racist"] the Jewish democratic-free-equal-to-all state only because it’s the “other”. It is neither Muslim nor purely Arab.
- The Arab racist world continues to play with Arab-Palestinians (grandchildren of Arab immigrants) like ping-pong against Israel.
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AND THE BEACON OF APARTHEID HAS THE AUDACITY TO CHARGE MULTI-RACIAL ISRAEL’S BEAUTIFUL DEMOCRACY [THAT OFTEN GIVES PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT FOR ITS ARABS OVER JEWS] WITH THIS TERMINOLOGY?
THE ARAB DECEPTIVE PROPAGANDA MACHINE THAT ACTS AS IF ARAB-ISLAMIC GENOCIDAL CAMPAIGN IS NOT OBVIOUS TO DETERMINE ISRAEL’S EXTRA SECURITY MEASURES [INCLUDING AN ANTI-TERROR / ANTI-MASSACRES WALL].
As if we don’t know the ‘Arab oil lobby’s power’ over the UN and other major international organizations and some African officials to go along with the Arab propaganda.
Despite some non-Arabs who jump on this wagon out of: ignorance, of confusion complex, or of sheer bigotry, never forget, that this entire “apartheid, racism” label was invented by Arab racists ganging up in the UN since 1975.
Even promoter of the apartheid-slur [which was actually invented in 1961 by A. Shukairy, who was the henchman and spokesman for the infamous Mufti al-Husseini the Mufti, notorious for being A. Hitler's ally and adviser on exterminating the Jews. Shukairy also called to throw the Jews into the sea] J. Carter admitted on CNN: “I recognize that Israel is a wonderful democracy with freedom of speech and equality of treatment under the law between Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis.” edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0612/12/acd.02.html
Incidentally, the lying Pallywood machine also created a fake “memorandum” claiming that N. Mandela ever uttered this crappy analogy.
Last but not least:
Isn’t it true that the anti-Jewish “apartheid” slur campaign is: 1) to demonize Jews and 2) to hide the real apartheid practiced by the Arab-Islamic world?