Kuwait: Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry on Friday summoned the Chargé d’Affairs of the United States Embassy, against the background of the embassy’s publication of signs and tweets supporting homosexuality.
On Thursday, the US Embassy in Kuwait published a picture supporting homosexuality, attached to an excerpt from US President Joe Biden’s speech on LGBT rights.
The US Embassy in Kuwait tweeted, “All human beings should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear no matter who they are or whom they love. @POTUS is a champion for the human rights of #LGBTQI persons.”
In a statement, the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry said that the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Americas Affairs, Nawaf Abdul Latif Al-Ahmad, met with the Acting US Ambassador to Kuwait Jim Holzneider, against the background of the embassy’s publication on its social media accounts of references and tweets supporting homosexuality.
According to the statement, Al-Ahmad handed Holzneider a memorandum confirming Kuwait’s rejection of what was published on the embassy’s website in Kuwait, and stressing the need for the embassy to respect the laws and regulations in force in the state of Kuwait.
Al-Ahmad also called on the US embassy to “commit not to publish such tweets, in compliance with the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”
This step sparked outrage on Kuwaiti streets, as a number of Kuwaiti parliament deputies expressed their strong anger over the congratulations published by the US Embassy through its accounts on the social networking sites Instagram and Twitter.
A number of Kuwaiti foreign representatives demanded that the US embassy in Kuwait apologize; Because it has gone beyond what is stipulated in diplomatic agreements to respect the laws of the countries hosting it, they said.
Representative Osama Al-Shaheen considered what the US embassy had done as “an unacceptable and repeated behaviour,” noting that embassies in his country “must respect Kuwait’s public order and its official religion.”
Representative Khaled Al-Mounes also considered that the mistakes of the US embassy “in what it promoted are catastrophic, and it must practice its work in accordance with diplomatic frameworks, and realize that our legitimate principles will not be tolerated.
For his part, lawyer Ahmed Al-Masitir considered the tweet “a blatant challenge to the nature of our conservative society, and an attempt to impose a fait accompli,” stressing that what his country’s foreign ministry had done was “in response to the pulse of the Kuwaiti street, which rejected this provocation of its religion and its constants.”
Homosexuality is punishable by law in a number of Muslim-majority countries, including Kuwait.
On Wednesday, the US embassy in Saudi Arabia published a tweet that included support for the LGBT community, saying: “During #Pride2022, @StateDept celebrates the contributions members of the LGBTQI+ community make to our nation. We are committed to ending violence, discrimination, and stigma against LGBTQI+ persons worldwide”.
LGBTQ Pride Month is celebrated in June in many countries around the world to commemorate the Stonewall riots.
The protests took place in the USA in 1969 and caused widespread change for LGBTQ + rights around the world.
