UN receives letter from Qatari tribe accusing Doha of discrimination

A delegation representing the Al Ghufran tribe, one of the biggest in Qatar, handed a letter to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, on Monday that claimed systemic discrimination at the hands of the authorities in Doha.

The tribe's representatives asked the UN office for the second time this month to stop Qatari authorities’ continuous, systematic discrimination against them, and 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, describing a deteriorating situation.

In reaction to the Al Ghufran tribe’s opposition to the Qatari regime’s destabilising policies in the region and its dispute with the neighbouring Gulf states, Qatari authorities revoked the citizenship of Sheikh Taleb Bin Lahom Bin Shreim in August. It did the same for 54 members of his family who belong to the Al Murrah tribe in a step considered to be an arbitrary act by various Human Rights organisations.

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

“Through your unique mandate to promote and protect human rights, we ask your esteemed commission to see and stand up to the suffering of our citizens who have been deprived of their citizenship in Qatar and to the crimes committed against them and to alleviate the conditions and suffering of our displaced people in the villages and deserts of border areas in neighboring countries” the delegation said.