Apatrides : affrontement au Koweit – 12 janvier 2012

Kuwait police break up demo, scores wounded

AFP

13 01 2012

KUWAIT CITY — Several people were wounded and dozens arrested on Friday as Kuwaiti police used tear gas, water cannons and batons to disperse stateless protesters demanding citizenship, witnesses and a rights group said.

Hundreds of riot police backed by armoured vehicles assaulted several hundred protesters who defied an interior ministry warning not to demonstrate as the authorities promised to resolve their decades-old plight.

The ministry said later in a statement that 21 policemen were wounded when protesters hurled rocks at them, with 16 of them treated on the spot and the rest hospitalised.

The statement said protesters ignored repeated police appeals to end the illegal demonstration and began throwing rocks and damaging public property, prompting police to intervene.

It said a number of protesters were arrested without revealing how many, but a security source told AFP that as many as 50 stateless people were detained.

Police chased the protesters into the streets of Jahra, northwest of the capital Kuwait City, and arrested many of them, including a 13-year-old boy, the independent Kuwait Association of Human Rights said on Twitter.

Some young protesters were seen with their heads bleeding after being beaten with batons by riot police, witnesses said. Read more…