Palestinians Tell of Abuse, Reprisals

Vengeance: Victims in hospitals say they were beaten by Kuwaiti or Saudi soldiers after being arrested. The Emir’s regime renews warnings to its military.

By KIM MURPHY

Palestinians Tell of Abuse, Reprisals — Los Angeles Times, 8 March 1991 — Los Angeles Times · 8 March 1991

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KUWAIT CITY—At least two Palestinians have been killed with gunshots to the head and five others have been hospitalized with injuries from apparent beatings and shootings, raising new concerns about reprisals against the Palestinian community here.

One of the hospitalized men, who is believed to have been tortured, is unable to talk coherently, and another is so fearful that he has refused to leave the hospital, according to physicians and representatives of Kuwait’s substantial Palestinian community.

All of the hospitalized Palestinians said they were beaten by Kuwaiti or Saudi soldiers after being arrested in their homes or at checkpoints throughout the city, in some cases for offenses as minor as failing to have their car registration.

Medical reports, combined with evidence that Palestinians are being detained for substantial periods and sometimes roughly harassed at military checkpoints throughout the city, have raised tensions among Kuwait’s remaining 180,000 Palestinians, some of whom are accused of collaborating with Iraqi forces during the seven-month-long occupation of Kuwait.

“We have a feeling that a danger is present after the liberation of Kuwait,” said one resident of Kuwait city’s Jabriyah district, one of three heavily Palestinian neighborhoods in the capital. “We are afraid. We are telling our families not to go out except for important reason.”

Said another: “Is the liberation of Kuwait a green light for their people to try to torture Palestinians, to make their life more difficult? We had difficulty during the Iraqis’ presence. Why should we suffer more?”

In New York on Wednesday, the Palestine Liberation Organization observer to the United Nations, Nasser Kidwa, wrote to the president of the Security Council charging that “violent and hostile actions” against Palestinians living in Kuwait continue at the hands of armed vigilantes and “some elements from the Kuwaiti army. . . .”

The confrontations raise questions about the future of Kuwait’s Palestinian community, estimated at nearly 400,000 before the Iraqi occupation, which historically has held important teaching, medical and technical positions that could not be filled by Kuwaitis.

Now, many Palestinians fear that the returning Kuwaiti government, angered at the PLO leadership’s support of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, will replace them with workers from Arab countries such as Egypt, which helped to liberate Kuwait from occupation.

Many Palestinian professionals who sent their families out of Kuwait during the occupation say they now believe it is unlikely that the Kuwaiti government will grant their families visas to return, and many therefore expect to be leaving Kuwait to join their spouses.

The Kuwaiti government has said it does not intend to discriminate against Palestinians in Kuwait who did not collaborate with Iraqi forces and has no plans to systematically replace Palestinians with Egyptians or other foreign workers.

Clearly alarmed at the reports of violence, it has ordered the army to renew instructions to its soldiers at checkpoints and insist on proper treatment of Palestinians.

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"Palestinians Tell of Abuse, Reprisals," Los Angeles Times, 8 March 1991, p. A10. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1991-049. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1991-049