EXILED QATARIS SEND THEIR MESSAGE TO THE WORLD
▶ Large tribe petitions UN after decades of Doha government discrimination
Khaznah Al Marri was barely five years old when, at the stroke of a pen, her tribe was uprooted from Qatar.
The daughter of the Ghufran tribe, a people expelled from Qatar in the 1990s, is now one of thousands clamouring for action over their plight.
A small number of the tribe’s members – not more than 20, Ms Al Marri says, supported former emir Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad’s failed effort to return to power in 1996.
That was a year after the successful coup by his son, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, father of the current emir, Sheikh Tamim.
In response, Sheikh Hamad expelled the whole tribe, pushing more than 6,000 across the border into the sparse desert tracts of Saudi Arabia. Not even the youngest of children were spared.
The Marri family was on holiday at the time of their expulsion, which took place even though they were not involved in the political power struggle. They were warned not to return.
“Friends told us to stay in Saudi for a few days until things get calm,” Ms Al Marri said.
What should have been only a few days turned into decades. Three years after the expulsion in 1999, her family’s passports were revoked. Ms Al Marri, her family and thousands of others from their tribe were left stateless.
“Because of 20 people’s mistake they kicked out more than 6,000 – all of the tribe,” she said. “I don’t know why they took my citizenship. I was five years old.”
Ms Al Marri told of her tough upbringing in exile in the south of Saudi Arabia. She spent most of the past two decades in a small desert village called Al Taweila – a far cry from the glitzy villas of Doha.
“I spent three years travelling two hours just to get to high school every day,” she said.
This week, representatives from Al Ghufran tribe held demonstrations outside the UN headquarters in Geneva against the Doha government’s mass expulsion of their people.
On Tuesday, they handed a letter into the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet.
The petition detailed the systemic discrimination the tribe suffered at the hands of the Qatari government.
Ms Al Marri told of friends who tried to travel back to Qatar on their passports. The documents were seized on arrival and the friends left unable to prove their Qatari origins.
“They were left in between Saudi and Qatar for many days,” she said.
Now she estimates there are more than 20,000 members of the tribe unable to get on with their lives in Qatar. Before the expulsion, her father was a petroleum engineer and she denies he had any links to the failed counter-coup.
Despite her young age, Ms Al Marri has vivid memories of her five years in Qatar.
“I remember my swimming pool outside my house, and my small cat,” she told The National. “I remember the dining room where the family would sit and talk. Everything was wonderful.”
Yet any anger she has over her current limbo is tempered by her father’s fondness for their homeland.
“My father is very sensitive about Qatar,” Ms Al Marri said. “When I am angry about being kicked out, he tries to show me the good side of Qatar. He still loves it.
“He says the people are very nice people. They always had a white heart. He says, maybe they didn’t hear our voices, but if they hear, they will help us.”
Now she is raising two children. Her son Khalid, 5, has autism. The situation compounds her hardship.
“I can’t get him into a good school, or a good hospital,” Ms Al Marri said.
“I’ve lived through enough instability. Now I have a child who is sick, I don’t want him to live the same way that I have lived.”
Although ignored for many years, she insists the Ghufran demands can be met if only the Qatari government would show compassion.
Her message to the world? “I want them to look at the kids, at the women, the people with special needs and give them their rights,” Ms Al Marri said.
“They belong to Qatar and they want to go back to their country,” she said. “We will keep asking until the last day of their lives.”
While exile has become an inter-generational affair, the Ai Ghufran have not lost love of country