Arab Spring energizes Gulf's stateless
By Rania El Gamal and Sylvia Westall
DUBAI/KUWAIT | Wed Dec 19, 2012 9:19am EST
(Reuters) - When Ahmed Abdul Khaleq started campaigning for the rights of
his fellow stateless people in the United Arab Emirates, he was well aware
he was risking something most activists were not - his home.
He was right. After two months in jail for what he said was his human rights
activism and campaigning for the stateless, he was given a choice: life in
jail or deportation.
"It was a really difficult decision. I left my country, family, my mother,
father and sisters in the UAE and left on my own to a strange country with
different language and traditions where I knew no one," said Abdul Khaleq,
35.
"It was the first time for me to be at the airport and take a flight. I used
to only see the planes flying above my head," he told Reuters, speaking by
phone from a country he asked not be named.
Abdul Khaleq was able to be deported because he is a "bidoon" - an Arabic
word meaning "without" - with limited access to jobs, medical care and
education despite having been born in the UAE and living there all his life,
after his father was unable to secure citizenship.
He was one of five activists who were jailed for criticizing the UAE rulers
last year but later pardoned. He was not charged with any offence when he
was jailed again in May before he was deported, he said. UAE officials say
he was expelled for security reasons.
Abdul Khaleq's expulsion is a rare measure taken against stateless residents
in the UAE. But his story is indicative of the plight of all bidoon, tens of
thousands without citizenship under strict nationality laws in the
U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states, where citizens enjoy generous welfare
benefits.
In the rising calls for reform in the Gulf region, the rights of the
stateless have gained new attention.
"Our movement is surely a result of the Arab Spring," said Mona Kareem, a
U.S.-based stateless rights activist who grew up in Kuwait.
"Before 1986, the bidoon did not feel discriminated against as they were
denied political rights and housing but not documents, education, and jobs.
After that, rights got deprived gradually,"
Stateless activists in the region do not call for bringing down governments.
But many have been energized by the change around the region to seek more
rights.
"We demand our right to live, our right to have a nationality. We don't want
land or money, only the right to be citizens," said Abdul Khaleq, who runs
the "Emaraty Bedoon" blog and is active on Twitter.
"There are people who have lived in the UAE for 40 and 50 years and whose
fathers and grandfathers were born in the country, but they are still
bidoons," he said.
NOMADIC TRIBES
Many of the Gulf stateless trace their origins to nomadic tribes that used
to move freely around the Gulf region, or to later non-Arab immigrants whose
ancestors failed to register for nationality after the discovery of oil when
the modern Gulf states were established in the 20th century.
Thousands fell through the net as the region's states were formed, sometimes
by Western powers in some cases as late as the 1960s or 1970s, and ended up
with no legal ties to any state, or were omitted for religious, ethnic or
tribal reasons.
Many bidoon do not have even a birth certificate and with no official
identity documents they are often unable to travel or access public
services. Their children are also born stateless and often have no access to
state education or health care.
"Statelessness throughout the Gulf is caused by a number of factors
including discrimination and a lack of willingness to share financial
resources," said Maureen Lynch, from research group The International
Observatory on Statelessness.
The United Nations estimates that
<
http://www.reuters.com/places/saudi-arabia> Saudi Arabia has some 70,000
stateless and Kuwait has 93,000. It has no figure for the UAE but activists
estimate their numbers at between 10,000 and 50,000. UAE officials say the
number is less than 5,000.
Gulf authorities say many stateless are "illegal residents" and include
immigrants who hid or destroyed their passports to claim nationality and
take advantage of the financial benefits granted to citizens.
In 2008, the UAE set up a body to register people without identity papers to
assess their status. One requirement was for those hiding their passports to
show them, a first step to evaluate cases to see who was eligible for
citizenship. UAE authorities say the country applies its laws fairly to all.
"The UAE government will always uphold and apply these laws and
regulations," said a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior. "Many bidoon
have come forward and revealed their country of origin. As a result, the UAE
government has waived all penalties for having resided in the UAE
illegally."
Hundreds have been naturalized since 2009, local media reported.
In Kuwait, the Central Agency for Remedying the Status of Illegal Residents
is tasked with assessing whether applicants should get citizenship.
"There are conditions to deserving Kuwaiti nationality, the main one being
that the person was registered in 1965. Other conditions include having a
clean criminal record," said Saleh al-Saeedi, head of the information
department in the agency.
Activists scoff at what they see as excuses.
"Although the bidoon fought in the Kuwaiti resistance (during the Iraqi
invasion) and died in wars, the state and many citizens discriminated
against them saying they are traitors of Iraqi roots," said Kareem, who is
in her mid-20s.
"It became an issue of racism when it was before that an issue of
bureaucracy and prejudice of urban against tribal."
HARD LIVES
Because they lack basic documents, many bidoons in the Gulf are unable to
own a house or a car and are limited to work only in the private sector with
low pay while their children cannot attend public schools. Many live in
poverty.
"Hospitals sometimes accept our papers and sometimes they don't," said a
bidoon living in Saudi Arabia who used the pseudonym Mohammed al-Onaizi.
He fled Kuwait with his family in 1990 after the Iraqi invasion and has been
living in Saudi since then.
"The government always promises to improve our situation but it never
happens. Even our tribal leaders do nothing. When we arrived from Kuwait
they made a big fuss. But now they ignore us. They have no shame and no
humanity."
In the northern UAE emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, hundreds of bidoons from the
al-Beloush tribe live in low-rise, dusty concrete buildings and ramshackle
houses, a sight few visitors to the country of gleaming glass-and-chrome
skyscrapers and man-made islands would expect to see.
The Beloush are originally from an area located between Pakistan and
<
http://www.reuters.com/places/iran> Iran. Some have secured passports
issued by the Comoros Islands; ambassador to the UAE Zubair al-Ahdal
explained to Reuters that his country has a policy of giving "economic
citizenship" to people who invest in the islands off Mozambique from
anywhere in the world, including from stateless people.
As several Beloush women stood nearby talking in a mix of Iranian and
Pakistani dialects, a man who gave his name as Ahmed said he got a Comoros
passport a year ago hoping it would eventually lead to a UAE passport.
Rights groups say acquiring a foreign passport could undermine a stateless
person's ability to win the nationality of their home country and make them
vulnerable to tough security measures like expulsion, however.
"It cruelly makes them complicit in their own expulsions and gives the
government a perfect out," said Sarnata Reynolds of rights group Refugees
International.
"From the government's perspective, exporting the bidoon costs little and
may well pay off politically."
(Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Riyadh; Editing by Sonya
Hepinstall)
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Received on Wed Dec 19 2012 - 11:50:33 EST
