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Kuwait refutes terrorist funding allegation

Thursday, Aug 09, 2012

Manama: A Kuwaiti official said that there was no evidence that any local association or charity group was collecting funds to send them to terrorist organisations.

“We have not received any note from the foreign ministry about the existence of an association giving funds collected locally to a terrorist group,” Bader Al Awadhi, the head of charity societies at the social affairs ministry, said.

The foreign ministry informs the social affairs ministry about such cases if they exist, Al Awadhi said.

Al Awadhi added that a fund-raising committee had contacted the social affairs ministry to launch a campaign to collect funds for Muslims in Burma.

“We contacted the foreign ministry to check whether Burma was on the list of countries for which fundraising is not allowed,” he said. “As this committee was the first to apply for collecting funds for Burma, no other society or person, including lawmakers, has the right to start a fund-raising campaign for Burma. We will not hesitate to take legal action against abusers,” he said in remarks published in the local press.

Several Kuwaitis have called for concrete action to help Muslims in Burma, urging the international community to give more attention to their “dramatic situation”.

In July, a Kuwaiti lawmaker said that Muslim and Arab countries should take strong action to help Muslims targeted in Myanmar and insisted that Kuwait should assume a pioneering role in the drive.

“We urge all Islamic and Arab countries to adopt a strong position to put an end to the killing of Muslims in Myanmar,” MP Mubarak Al Alwan said. “If there is no strong stance against this tragedy afflicting Muslims in Myanmar, we are sure that there will be a repeat in other Asian countries against Muslim minorities,” he said in a statement.

Al Alwan said that the international community has been ominously quiet about the events in Myanmar.

“Muslims are being specifically targeted and oppressed. All Muslim countries must move promptly and without hesitation to help them and put an end to the killing of innocent civilians, children and women. The world is watching in silence. ”The lawmaker said that Kuwait should move decisively to put an end to the “systematic murders and rapes targeting the Muslim community”.

“We demand that Kuwait launch an international drive for a Security Council resolution that condemns the barbaric acts against Muslims in Myanmar and establishes humanitarian assistance to help the victims. We also call for expelling the Myanmar envoy in Kuwait and for severing diplomatic relations with the Fascist regime,” he said.

Kuwaitis should be empowered to set up committees that will collect donations and essential items to help the victims, he said.

“It is a real tragedy and we should move to halt and eventually end this collective killing of Muslims,” he said.

Amnesty International, the human rights group, has accused both security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists of carrying out attacks against Rohingyas.

The Rohingyas are regarded as foreigners by the ethnic majority. They are reportedly denied citizenship by the government because it considers them illegal settlers from neighbouring Bangladesh, the rights watchdog said.

The UN estimates that 800,000 Rohingyas live in Burma.

By Habib Toumi Bureau Chief

Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.

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