Kuwaiti authorities have increased the repression of government critics in 2024, according to a new report published by Amnesty International on Thursday.

The report found that authorities have engaged in various forms of repressive acts since January, including arbitrarily arresting and stripping Kuwaiti citizenship from civilians as well as prosecuting Kuwaiti politicians.

Amnesty International Researcher on Kuwait Devin Kenney stated:

Kuwaiti authorities must immediately end this chilling wave of repression. No one should face prosecution or imprisonment simply for criticizing the government. The authorities must immediately release all those detained solely for peacefully exercising their human rights and drop the charges against them.

The report found that authorities have sentenced at least three individuals to prison this year for “publicly voicing their views and opinions.” Kuwaiti authorities claimed that those three individuals, Anwar Hayati, Mohammad al-Bargash and Abdullah Fairouz, insulted or criticized the emir or the royal family. The men were separately sentenced to between three and five years in prison.

Amnesty International also reported that at least nine men and their families have been denaturalized, with their Kuwaiti citizenship stripped from them without an explicit reason. Kenney emphasized the importance of respecting the right to nationality in these cases, stating, “The Kuwaiti authorities continue to treat nationality as a privilege that they arbitrarily dispense or deny to Kuwaitis based on their political opinions.”

Kuwaiti officials this year have also begun prosecuting politicians on charges related to criticizing the nation’s government. Amnesty International claimed that such “prosecutions for political speech” violate the freedom of expression under international standards, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The increase in repressive actions by authorities has coincided with Emir Mishal Al-Sabah’s decision to dissolve the nation’s parliament last month. The emir also suspended constitutional provisions that require an elected legislature, with the executive cabinet reportedly assuming some of the parliament’s powers. The suspension is set to last for up to four years and came only a month after the country held its national parliamentary elections.

This is not the first time an emir of Kuwait has dissolved the nation’s parliament. In 2016, Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah similarly issued a decree to dissolve the legislative body, citing “mounting security challenges as well as volatile regional developments.”

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), several of Kuwait’s penal code provisions, along with its cybercrime law, criminalize speech that is “deemed insulting to religion, the emir, or foreign leaders.” Over the past decade, Kuwait has used such laws to implement crackdowns on government criticism and dissent. Amnesty International found that the country has “significantly curtailed the scope of public freedoms” during that time, making it “more dangerous for Kuwaitis and others living there who seek to exercise their human rights to dissent and protest.”