Kuwait's Opposition on Trial

Earlier this week, Kuwait’s court sentenced the opposition front man Musallam al-Barrak to five years in prison for insulting the emir, an act criminalized by the Kuwaiti constitution.

The verdict has been awaited for months and it was not the only case that al-Barrak was facing. Al-Barrak was also to attend another trial over storming the parliament with other MPs and protesters in November 2011. When al-Barrak was arrested in November 2012 for insulting the emir in a public speech, thousands marched to the central jail, prompting his release in less than 48 hours. We thought this man was too powerful to be jailed, so why would authorities commit political suicide by angering his supporters? No one can frighten the authorities anymore it seems, and here are some factors to consider:

Al-Barrak is no longer a representative of the parliament. He no longer enjoys parliamentary immunity and has become a symbol of ‘instability’ for those who are not interested in pushing for change through mass mobilization. Last December, the opposition decided to boycott the elections to protest the voting law that the emir amended using an “emergency decree.” The country witnessed its largest protests that included anti-opposition Kuwaitis who did not approve of a change in the voting law from outside the parliament. That change was the perfect trap for the opposition. Eventually, the protests cooled down, the opposition became a parliamentary past, and a Bahraini-like parliament was installed in place.

To have an idea of what kind of parliament Kuwait has now, we can take Safa’a Al-Hashim’s latest statement as an example. The female parliamentarian — who used to give away anti-protest T-shirts in shopping malls last year — threatened to grill the Minister of Interior Affairs for not dispersing and punishing those who recently protested in Al-Andalus.