In the beginning was the word. More specifically, in the beginning was a speech. "The speech," says Mundhir al-Habib, a couple dozen words for which he would willingly go to prison. "If need be," he adds.
Ever since al-Habib, a 32-year-old political scientist, took a police boot to the face at a demonstration, his sense of civic engagement has changed. Now he meets with other activists to repeat "the speech" together in public.
It's a dangerous thing to do. "The speech" refers to a handful of thoughts expressed out loud last October by a former member of the Kuwaiti parliament. Too loudly, perhaps. The politician, Musallam al-Barrak, was sentenced in April to five years in prison.
In response, several thousand Kuwaitis gathered in front of a prison at the edge of the city to protest. There were warning shots, tear gas and injuries. Barrak has been out on bail since.
One sentence in particular especially unsettled Sheikh Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, although al-Barrak uttered it in a deferential manner: "We will not allow you, your highness, to take Kuwait into the abyss of autocracy."
These are words every Kuwaiti now knows. They are spread by smartphone or called out spontaneously in parks. Sometimes at night, a car can be heard honking its horn to the rhythm of the sentence: We will not allow you, we will not allow you.
Mundhir al-Habib and 54 others went to stand in front of al-Barrak's house and recite the sentences the former politician had spoken, knowing that doing so would land them in court. There are already three activists in prison for spreading lines of poetry that could be misunderstood or making allegedly insulting comments about the emir.
"Any sentence can be interpreted as criticism," al-Habib says. "You can go to prison for two years for 140 keystrokes." This statement of his, spoken in a tearoom, could be risky as well: "I believe in freedom of speech. So I'm going to start exercising it." 'They Treat Us Like Little Boys' » | Alexander Smoltczyk | Thursday, May 30, 2013
