Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 8, 1991 TAG: 9103080230
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: KUWAIT CITY LENGTH: Medium
Fellow members of the political opposition took it as a bad sign.
As the Iraqi soldiers fled Kuwait, Joon and others hoped that the void would be filled by democracy. Western observers predicted that the timing was good: The helping hand by allied armies would compel the ruling Sabah family to take at least some steps toward popular rule.
But the opposition leaders say that just the reverse is happening. The martial law declared by the Sabah family from their haven in Saudi Arabia has gotten tighter every day, with new restrictions on the movements of anyone whose loyalty is suspect.
"We believe the martial law . . . is the first step to clear out political opposition," Khalid al-Wasmi, a university professor and member of the opposition, said outside Joon's intensive care hospital room. "We have no reason to trust the government."
In the days after the liberation of Kuwait city, the government has increased checkpoints to monitor identity papers, and clamped on a nightly curfew. It has tightened restrictions on reporters, placed some areas of the city off-limits, and discouraged opposition members such as Wasmi from talking to reporters.
A year after Kuwait gained independence from the British in 1961, it adopted a constitution that recognized the ruling Sabah family, and established a Parliament with guaranteed freedoms of religion, speech, press and human rights.
The democratic part of the document has been honored more in the breach. The Parliament has been dissolved whenever the family declared an overriding need. It last met in 1985.
There is neither free press nor free speech, nor independent judicial system. When the Parliament was permitted, only adult Kuwaiti males whose families were here before 1920 could vote. Women and ethnic groups who make up three-fourths of the population had no vote and few rights.
Last October, in Saudi Arabia, Emir Jaber Sabah, the country's ruler, acknowledged the democratic requirements of the constitution. Thursday, in Kuwait City, Crown Prince Saad al Abdullah al Sabah repeated the vague promise of democracy in response to a question at his first press conference since returning to Kuwait.
"I would like everyone to hear this reiteration, especially those trying to raise doubts and circulate rumors and vicious hearsay," the crown prince said.
But he added that "we will not hesitate" to extend the three-month martial law if the family believes it is needed. He would not set a date for a parliamentary election because it "is dependent on a number of issues, most important the establishment of law and order."
He strongly defended the role of the ruling family and said such issues as suffrage for women must be studied.
A few hours before he spoke, a small group of men gathered in the home of an opposition leader for a "diwaniya." Sitting cross-legged with sweet tea on the carpet of an empty room, the opposition members said this traditional daily social gathering had become the focus of a rising call for democracy in the days before the Iraqi invasion.
Abdul al-Farhan, 47, a businessman and the host, is pessimistic the movement will be allowed to rise again. He was jailed for four days by the government before the invasion. "There is no indication they are changing," Farhan said of the governing family.
The shooting of Joon has raised the fears of opposition leaders. At his press conference, the crown prince Thursday acknowledged but dismissed rumors of "death squads" employed by his family.
But, Farhan said, "most of the opposition leaders aren't sleeping in their homes at night."
Neither is the emir, however. His failure to return to the country so far from Saudi Arabia has been explained by the government in terms of the need to ensure there are no lingering Iraqi soldiers.
But "in my opinion, the Emir is afraid of the people, not the Iraqis," one diwaniya participant said.
"We want to liberate Kuwait," said Khalid al-Rasheed, an opposition journalist. "Not just the land. We want to liberate the nation."
by CNB