Kuwait: ‘The People’s Spring’
As a wealthier Gulf monarchy with a relatively small population and a government that can continue distributing wealth to most of its citizens, Kuwait has mostly avoided violent demonstrations in the wake of the Arab Spring and, thus far, there have been few calls for outright regime change. Moreover, with a slightly more robust parliament than its neighbours the emirate has enjoyed something of a safety valve, as some degree of free expression has been tolerated. Nonetheless there were still intense periods of street protests in 2011 along with strong and very public opposition of the government and the ruling family — most especially the unelected prime minister, Nasser bin Muhammad Al-Sabah. And, as with the other Gulf monarchies, there has been a noticeable crackdown on dissenting intellectuals, journalists, and other activists. Most of the criticism has been centred on government corruption, the squandering of national resources, and the lack of meaningful political and economic reforms, which many Kuwaitis believe are long overdue.
In December 2010, only a week before the beginning of the Tunisian revolution, an outdoor rally was staged in a suburb of Kuwait City by a group of opposition members, including MPs and academics. Accusing the government of trying to amend the emirate’s 1962 constitution and thus limit the powers of Kuwait’s parliament, and protesting that fifteen of the Kuwaiti cabinet’s sixteen ministers remained unelected, the men were only dispersed following a baton charge by Kuwaiti special forces. Dozens of participants were reportedly beaten, with five Kuwaiti nationals being taken to hospital for treatment of their wounds and fractures.[913] A month later, in January 2011, the opposition began making further claims, namely that the government was buying off MPs to ensure their loyalty in parliamentary votes. Calling themselves the ‘Anything but the Constitution’ bloc, the fairly broad-based group then met to discuss and plan their agenda to ‘protect the constitution, basic freedoms, and national unity’ while also condemning the government for ‘putting pressure on media outlets that comment negatively on the government’. In particular, the government’s closures of Al-Mustaqbal daily newspaper and of the Mubasher satellite television channel earlier that month were strongly criticised. Warning the government that it was violating freedoms by suppressing the constitution, one member argued that the authorities ‘…should investigate the sources that fund corrupt media instead of targeting the brave youth of Twitter, who are honest and loyal to Kuwait’. Meanwhile several other members called for the outright removal of the prime minister on the basis that attempts by opposition MPs to pass non-co-operation motions against him should have pushed him to resign his post.[914] In early February 2011, with the Egyptian revolution in full flow, the formal opposition’s demands were bolstered by the emergence of an informal coalition of younger Kuwaiti activists, most of whom were made up of students, young professionals, and other social media users. Calling themselves the ‘Fifth Fence’, the group began using Twitter to urge Kuwaiti nationals to stage a mass rally outside the parliamentary buildings in order to protest the government’s ‘undemocratic practices’ and ‘to press for the legitimate right of holding sessions and to declare our rejection of the continuity of this government’.[915]
As with Saudi Arabia, the Kuwaiti government’s instinctive response to this mounting opposition was massively to increase public spending. An announcement was made that free food coupons would be issued to all Kuwait nationals for a period of 14 months, and that each citizen — including newborn babies — would receive a one-off payment of about $3500. As such those Kuwaiti families with several children received lump sums of $15,000 or more. Although carefully timed to coincide with the emirate’s celebration of fifty years of independence, the spending package — which was estimated to have cost over $4 billion[916]—was widely viewed as a quick remedy to keep poorer Kuwaiti nationals off the streets. In parallel to the increased spending the government also began using defamation suits and other legal mechanisms to pursue the more vocal members of the opposition movements. In June 2011, for example, two Kuwaiti nationals were arrested and put on trial for using Twitter to ‘harm the state’s interests’ and allegedly insult the Kuwaiti ruling family along with the ruling families of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.[917] Similarly, a young female Kuwaiti national of half-British descent was believed to have been arrested for tweeting that ‘Sheikh Sabah should give us our money and don’t bother coming back’ in reference to the Kuwaiti ruler’s[918] absence in London receiving health care. Most worryingly, a Kuwaiti journalist working for a daily newspaper was subjected to a gun attack in a northern suburb of Kuwait City. After confirming that there were bullet holes in his car the matter was reported to the Kuwait Journalists’ Association which stated that ‘we hope to have [some information] about the identity of the person who fired the bullet and the motives’ and that ‘we are not used to using firearms in Kuwait to express our views. We have always opted for dialogue to communicate, regardless of our differences’.[919]
As with its neighbours, the mixture of largesse and increased repression was not enough to curtail protests in Kuwait, and the latter part of 2011 saw major developments as opposition movements continued to gather strength. Despite the military intervention in Bahrain having taken place under the guise of the GCC, a large number of sympathetic Kuwaiti nationals were believed to have funded the Bahraini opposition, with some having even visited Bahrain to take part in the protests. Indeed, the Bahraini authorities stated that ‘we have full knowledge about their support [for the opposition], for them this was an ideological support, and there were figures who visited, including businessmen and those of influence’ and explained that this was ‘the reason behind our calls through official channels to prevent them from entering Bahrain and they are not welcomed and added to the blacklist’.[920] More worryingly for the Kuwaiti ruling family, by summer 2011 further protests were held in an effort to force the prime minister’s resignation and investigate his alleged corruption. In June, for example, around 5,000 Kuwaiti nationals, including a delegation from the Kuwaiti Lawyers’ Society, rallied outside the parliamentary building under the banner of ‘For the sake of Kuwait’. Shouting ‘Leave, leave Nasser, we don’t want to see you tomorrow’ and ‘Leave, Kuwait deserves something better than you’, they demanded the removal of the prime minister, his deputy, and several of the ministers. Addressing the gathering, one activist accused some MPs of being ‘government mercenaries’ while a former MP claimed that the prime minister was trying to ‘empty the constitution of its contents’. Most damningly, other protestors claimed that the prime minister’s reign was ‘full of corruption and that citizens were being killed at police stations under interrogation’ and that parliament had been ‘abducted during his premierships… with honest MPs being prosecuted for saying the truth’.[921]