Rhetorical Strategies

Kuwaiti Passport

Bedoon Passport

 

At the Mercy of his Kuwaiti Wife

Actually, the situation of children of a stateless man married to a Kuwaiti woman is better than children of stateless parents. The main reason is because children of a Kuwaiti woman married to a Bedoon can be enrolled in governmental schools unlike other Bedoon who do not have the right to be educated.  They have to pay to obtain medical care.  They can not enter Kuwait University even if they score a high GPA.  They can not have car license. They can work with low wages.

 Travel Documents

 It is so difficult and a demanding process for a Bedoon to obtain a passport.  Bedoon children of a Kuwaiti mother can obtain a temporary, distinctive, grey-colored passport unlike their mother’s blue-colored passport.  The General Department of Nationality and Travel Documents in the Ministry of Interior issued the grey-colored passport lately.  They changed the color of the passport to grayish color; they gave the passport a sapless look and give its holders a sense of being a refugee who owns nothing in life but misery.  Bedoon passport was blue-colored the same as their mother’s passport, no difference except that Bedoon passport is issued under (article 17, paragraph 2) and the content of the passport (Being without=Bedoon). What makes Bedoon travel document/passport distinctive in addition to its color is that the Kuwaiti government has the right to withdraw/take it in the airport and checkpoints after coming back. 

 Dose the change in color from blue to gray imply something?  Is it a rhetorical strategy that is created/manufactured to cause physiological abuse?  Personally, I strongly agree that it is a new method of torturing stateless people.  It is a dirty and inhumane action/policy.  It hurts.  Some people might say that I am exaggerating and it’s just a color, come on! No, I do not think so because the opponents of the human rights in Kuwait are sadists, love to cause pain for others. 

Another speculation regarding the change in the color of Bedoon passport is to show that Kuwaitis are superior over Bedoon.  Let’s mediate the situation of a Kuwaiti mother, her husband, and her children at a checkpoint.  I can assure you, it is heartbreaking.  It is discrimination between the “Self” and the “Other,” Kuwaiti national represents the “Self” and Bedoon represents the “Other.”

 Otherness and Racism

 The “Other” is a description of someone that is foreign, mysterious, and maybe even frightening and threatening.  Thus, Kuwaiti government deals with Bedoon as inferiors, irrationals, them, depraved, strangers, and different; whereas Kuwaitis are regarded as familiar, superior, virtuous, rational, us, and normal.  These binary oppositions seem to be applied also to the Kuwaiti woman who is married to a “Stateless” man.  For example, the Kuwaiti man has the right to pass his nationality to his wife, no matter what her nationality was.  This is considered racist act within the Kuwaiti society.  Precisely, these binary oppositions applied to Kuwaiti woman’s “Bedoon” family show how the male society/ Kuwaiti society “puts so much pressure on them [Kuwaiti women] that they feel obliged to be secretive” (al-Mughni 19). 

Kuwaiti sociologist Haya al-Mughni states in her book Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender,  

In 1994 Kuwait signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), but with some reservations. Objections were made to the provisions giving women political rights, the right to guardianship and adoption of children, and the right to pass their nationality on to their children (173).

As an interpretation of the current situation of Kuwaiti woman married to “Bedoon”, Kuwait practices “Discrimination Against Women”; thus, it violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states, “Everyone has the right to a nationality” (Article 15, paragraph 1).  

Personally, I think the Kuwaiti government does sign CEDAW, which means approving its conditions accordingly, because of the following reasons: 

• Proclaim support for Kuwaiti women and assure on the equality between men and women, i.e: passing on the nationality.
• Proclaim that Kuwait is a democratic state, so that Human Rights Watch will not report Kuwait as a barbaric country–Preserve the outside image.
• Proclaim that Kuwait serves the interests of women social stratum.
• Dispel the idea that states that Middle Eastern societies are male societies. 

At the end, I wonder:

• What does nationship/citizenship mean? Is it just a membership in a political society? 
• Why citizens have a much higher status than non-citizens?
• Who is in-charge of designing the methods used to determine whether someone could be a citizen or not?

I believe that no matter if there was a solution for Statelessness “Bedoon” dilemma or not, a stateless person can create his own identity and preserve his soul from getting lost in a state of despair once he/she knows him/her self.  It is right that Statelessness can hinder the human being from creating a perfect life and brings alive his dreams, but it can not limit his/her will. 

 Amin Maalouf, Lebanese author, states in his book On Identity,

Identity is one of those false friends. [...] It has been the fundamental question of philosophy from Socrates’ “Know thyself!” through countless other masters down to Freud (1).