Sunday, 2 March, 2008 @ 7:48 PM
where one third of the citizens are Shiite Muslims.
Mughniyeh was assassinated in Damascus, Syria last month and Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of being behind his murder, but Israel denied any involvement. But Mughniyeh’s widow, an Iranian citizen accused Syria of helping the Israelis in assassinating he husband
Now Kuwait wants to deport all the foreigners that participated in the rally
Kuwaiti Interior Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Khaled Al-Sabah declared
“We will deport any foreigner who took part in the mourning rally. This is a decision we will implement and we will not back down,”
The interior minister was not specific on the number of people Kuwait intends to deport , nor when the ministry will start implementing this directive
Last month Four Kuwaiti attorneys filed a lawsuit against two Shiite MPs accusing them of being founders and members of Hezbollah Kuwait .
“We accused them of being founders and members of Hezbollah Kuwait, undermining national unity and declaring loyalty to Lebanon’s Hezbollah,” attorney Dhaidan al-Mutairi said after meeting with the public prosecutor.
The lawsuit named Kuwaiti MPs Adnan Abdul Samad, who spoke at the rally, and Ahmad Lari.
The parliamentary Popular Action bloc, which includes prominent opposition members, said it “utterly rejects and condemns” the participation of lawmakers Adnan Abdul Samad, and Ahmad Lari in the Mughniyeh eulogy which “bloodied the hearts” of Kuwaitis
The parliamentary bloc said on February 20 that it has “expelled the two Shi’ite lawmakers from its bloc for eulogizing Hezbollah’s, Imad Mughniyeh, because they disregarded the feelings of their fellow Kuwaitis.”
MP Abdul Samad described Mughniyah as a hero during his speech at the rally. This has sparked public outrage in a country that considers him a terrorist and holds him responsible for hijacking a Kuwait Airways flight and killing two of its Kuwaiti passengers 20 years ago.
The two lawmakers were only expelled from their bloc but remained in the legislature, although some lawmakers have said the two should resign from the 50-seat house.
Kuwait and sectarianism
Kuwait Interior Minister has informed his Bahraini counterpart Sheikh Rashed Abdullah Al-Khalifa about the participation of some Bahrainis in the mourning rally for Moughniyeh. But then he said “Our Bahraini brothers will always sympathize with us no matter what happens to Kuwait.”
He said he had discussed various security issues concerning Bahrain and Kuwait with Sheikh Rashed “We agreed on the need to reject any phenomenon that will push our nations toward sectarianism. Kuwait abhors discrimination and it will not tolerate any move to put a wall between Sunnis and Shiites. We are all Kuwaitis regardless of our religious or sectarian affiliations,” he added.
The Minister added “we will not allow the incident witnessed in Kuwait over the last few days to disturb our national unity, democratic process and freedom. We will also foil attempts to propagate ideologies that threaten our national unity. Anybody with such ideas should practice his beliefs in other countries as this is totally unacceptable in Kuwait.”
Obviously Kuwait is aware that awakening sectarianism will be bad news for its national unity, specially since it is sandwiched between Iran , Iraq and Saudi Arabia ( see map) . Besides one analyst said ” all Kuwait has to do is look at Lebanon and see what sectarianism has done there to its national unity. This should be the best lesson to Kuwait to steer away from sectarianism “
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