In the interrogation, the Minister asked her to leave Kuwait if she didn’t
like the government stripping foreign wives of the Kuwaiti nationality,
and he asked her why she would say things online to mock his actions.
He then proceeded to attack her physically. She was then interrogated
based on threats of being prosecuted based on examination of her
posts on X. Al-Hussinan immediately left her country and posted her
statement online.
Similarly, Bedoon activist Mohammad Al-Barghash has been harassed
legally for years. GCHR has documented the case brought against him,
in which the Court of Appeal sentenced him to imprisonment and hard
labour for three years in in January 2024. He was charged with spreading
fake news, misusing his phone and harming the state’s reputation.(38)
Previously, in October 2023, he had been acquitted by the Court of First
Instance and released after 55 days of detention.
However, on December 2024, the Court of Cassation in Kuwait acquitted
Al-Barghash of charges of spreading false news on social media about
the authorities’ abuse of Bedoon citizens, and subsequently decided to
overturn the three-year prison sentence against him, after he had been
unjustly imprisoned for nearly a year. (39)
Al-Barghash belongs to the Bedoon community in Kuwait. He founded
the National Bloc of Kuwaiti Bedoons, which he also heads, and which
has organised several events to shed light on the chronic problems from
which the Bedoon community suffers, including arbitrarily depriving
them of their right to nationality, and to demand radical solutions to
these problems.
(38) https://www.gc4hr.org/bedoon-community-rights-defender-mohammed-al-barghash-sentencedto-3-years-in-prison
(39) https://x.com/mohalbargsh/status/1870489272454984132?s=43
21
Kuwait: Amendments to Kuwaiti Nationality Law
pose serious threats to human rights