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Child from top Qatari tribe presents regime bias to UN

September 17, 2018
The tribe representatives asked the UN office to stop Qatari authorities’ to protect the tribe’s members. — Courtesy photo
The tribe representatives asked the UN office to stop Qatari authorities’ to protect the tribe’s members. — Courtesy photo

ABU DHABI — A delegation representing the Al-Ghufran tribe, which is one of the biggest tribes in Qatar, handed a letter to the UN High Commissioner describing the “continuous and systematic discrimination” that the Qatari authorities have exercised against them.

The delegation also presented the accounts of the young boy Muhammed Al-Ghufrani whose citizenship was revoked by the government and his family displaced for being members of the tribe.

The tribe representatives, who had previously submitted a complaint to the commissioner in September of last year, asked the UN office to protect the tribe’s members, restore their lost rights and to punish the Qatari regime for human rights violations.

“In the previous complaint we summarized the tragedy of the Al-Ghofran clan of the tribe of Bani Mura in Qatar, from 1996 to 2004 to the time of the writing of this petition they were savagely subjected to the worst crimes of racial discrimination, forced displacement, denial of return to their homeland, imprisonment and acts of torture that led to psychological damage and death within the Qatari intelligence prisons,” stated the representatives, whose families continue to face the toughest living situations in Qatar.

Following its dispute with neighboring Gulf States, and the tribe’s opposition to the Qatari regime’s policies, Qatari authorities revoked the citizenship of Sheikh Taleb Bin Lahom Bin Shreim and 54 members of his family who belong to Al-Murrah tribe in a step considered as an arbitrary act by various Human Rights organization.

The Arab Federation for Human Rights (AFHR) described the Qatari call as a “revenge” against the members of the tribe for using their natural rights to freedom of expression and movement.

The Qatari authorities took further steps when it confiscated the properties of the members with revoked citizenship, following the call with a systematic persecution against all the clans belonging to the large tribe, such as the Al-Ghufran clan.

The Qatari regime has also revoked the citizenship of another senior tribal leader, Sheikh Shafi Nasser Hamoud Al-Hajri, a senior member of Shaml Al-Hawajer tribe, which is connected to the famous tribe of Qahtan. Along with the famous Qatari poet Mohammed Al-Marri who belongs to the Al-Murrah tribe.

Later, Qatari tribe Al-Ghufran declared that 6,000 of its members were forcibly displaced after the Qatari regime deprived them of their nationality and their national rights.

“We assure you that the Qatari authorities, ranging from the emir of Qatar, the prime minister, the attorney general, the president of the National Committee for Human Rights, senior security officials and dignitaries, are aware of the discrimination members of Al-Ghofran clan are subjected to and those senior officials are deeply involved in this crime,” the delegation stated.

Last September, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) announced its total solidarity with the case of Al-Ghofran clan. “Since 1995, the Qatari authorities have pursued a policy of collective punishment against the tribe of Ghofran that entailed the revoking of the nationality of more than 6,000 its tribesmen and many of them were expelled from the country after their property and personal funds were confiscated. — Al Arabiya English


September 17, 2018
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