KUWAIT (Reuters) – A 26-year-old Kuwaiti pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges he insulted the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media, the first day of a high-profile and divisive court case in the Gulf state.

Charges were brought by a civil plaintiff, who called for Shi’ite Muslim Hamad al-Naqi to be put to death, saying he must be made an example of to others. The case has stoked tensions between Kuwait’s Sunnis and minority Shi’ites.

Naqi’s lawyer asked for his client, who has been in prison since his arrest in March, to be released on bail. The judge declined the request and adjourned the trial until next week.

Sitting in a wooden and metal cage guarded by armed guards in black balaclavas at the start of the trial, a bearded, tired-looking Naqi sat quietly clasping his hands, occasionally rubbing the back of his shaved head and looking at the floor.

Wearing a blue prison uniform and glasses, Naqi was escorted from the cage to face the judge, confirmed his personal details and entered his innocent plea.

The case has caused uproar in Kuwait, where dozens of Sunni Muslim activists and lawmakers have protested against Naqi some calling for the death penalty and accusing him of links to Shi’ite regional power Iran, something he has denied.

Shi’ites make up about one third of Kuwait’s 1.1 million nationals and vocal members can be found in senior positions in parliament, media and business.

KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait’s ruler has blocked a proposal by 31 of the 50 elected members of parliament to amend the constitution to make all legislation in the Gulf Arab state comply with Islamic law, an MP said on Thursday.

The approval of Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Saba, is needed for any constitutional change.

“His highness the emir is not in favour,” said Mohammad al-Dallal, an Islamist MP and legal expert. The proposal was put forward by the Islamic Justice Bloc and signed by 31 lawmakers, he said.

Political parties are banned in Kuwait so MPs have to rely on forming blocs in parliament. The 15-member cabinet selected by the prime minister can also vote in parliament.

“We must think again about convincing the emir or submitting it again in another format,” Dallal said.

“Our society is a conservative society, a lot of people request that laws comply with sharia (Islamic law). We also do not have a stable political system,” he said, adding such an amendment could help make lawmaking less chaotic.

Islamist MPs have proposed amending the constitution in this way several times in the past. This time, they asked to change article 79 to make sharia “the only source” of legislation rather than a major or main source as it is now.

KUWAIT (Reuters) – Poor urban infrastructure and high youth unemployment helped fuel the Arab Spring and governments across the region must tackle both if they are to prevent further unrest, the United Nations said in a report on Monday.

The urban population of Arab cities is expected to more than double to 438.6 million by 2050, increasing demand for housing, social services and infrastructure, the U.N. Human Settlements Programme (U.N. Habitat) said.

Although the primary trigger for unrest across the region in the past year appeared to be a desire for more freedom in the face of entrenched autocracies, the report said social factors had intensified people’s frustration and would need to be addressed along with their political concerns.

“What is often less understood is that the Arab Spring is really a call for social reform and urban policies that can deliver adequate living conditions for rapidly growing young and poor urbanites,” U.N. Habitat said at the launch of its ‘State of Arab Cities 2012′ report in Kuwait.

“Youth employment is very high in the Arab region and the chances of finding affordable housing is a dim prospect for many urban youths too,” it said.

“These two trends converge in Arab cities in an explosive mixture that has fuelled the region’s social unrest over the past year.”

The revolts that erupted last year have toppled Arab autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, are still raging in Syria and Bahrain, and have sent shockwaves across the whole region.

KUWAIT, May 3 (Reuters) – In a region dominated by sovereign and government-related bond issues, Kuwait has bucked the trend over recent months with a series of successful corporate sales that hint at greater capital-raising potential in the Gulf state.

The global financial crisis hit Kuwaiti investment companies hard, pushing some into debt restructuring talks and making banks cautious about lending. Meanwhile, the euro zone debt crisis is causing European banks to pull in their horns.

Bank lending to the private sector grew just 3.2 percent from a year earlier in February, which was slow considering private analysts expect Kuwait’s gross domestic product, buoyed by high oil prices, will expand about 3.8 percent this year in inflation-adjusted terms. So Kuwaiti corporations may have little choice but to diversify their funding into bonds.

Narrowing spreads have encouraged this process. Yields on one-year government Treasury bonds have compressed to 1.25 percent in March 2012 from 6 percent in 2006-2007, central bank data shows; with the dinar pegged to a U.S. dollar-denominated basket of currencies, Kuwait has had to follow the global trend of low interest rates.

“With respect to Kuwait, since 2010 we have seen dramatic spread narrowing and as a result, corporate issuers are finding the bond product a viable and cost-reducing alternative,” said an investment banker based in the region, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to talk to media.

Corporate dinar-denominated issuance has dominated bond activity in Kuwait since the end of last year; four corporate bonds have come to market worth a total of 178.5 million Kuwaiti dinars ($644 million).

In December, Kuwait’s Commercial Facilities Co (CFC), a consumer credit group, priced a 50 million dinar bond through sole lead arranger NBK Capital.

KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait is about to take a firmer line on regulation of social media, uneasy about people who it says use Twitter and Facebook to stoke sectarian tensions and wary of spillover from turmoil in nearby Gulf states and Syria.

Although Kuwait has largely been spared the sectarian violence that flares in other countries in the region, the Sunni government is constantly aware of the potential for Sunni-Shi’ite tensions to boil over.

Authorities are particularly sensitive to developments in Bahrain, where the Sunni monarchy has cracked down on mainly Shi’ite Muslim protesters. Kuwait also borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and sits across the Gulf from non-Arab Shi’ite power Iran.

Lately there are signs that frictions are heating up, and much of the activity is being stoked online.

“Twitter is becoming a platform that many people are using and many people are watching. You cannot look at this without neglecting what is happening in the region,” said Kuwaiti Twitter user and blogger Jassim al-Qamis.

Twitter has enjoyed runaway popularity in Kuwait, whose oil wealth and freer political system have helped to shield it from Arab Spring-style anti-government demonstrations.

One million accounts were registered in the country of 3.6 million inhabitants as of April, a two-fold rise in 12 months, according to Paris-based Semiocast, which compiles Twitter data.

KUWAIT, April 24 (Reuters) – Kuwait plans to pass laws this year to regulate the use of social networking sites such as Twitter, the information minister said on Tuesday, in the wake of cases of alleged blasphemy and sectarianism that have prompted protests.

Kuwaiti lawmakers also voted in favour of a legal amendment earlier this month which could make insulting God and the Prophet Mohammad punishable by death.

Twitter is extremely popular in the Gulf state of 3 million and many public figures use the messaging site to debate politics, share gossip and advertise events. Unlike print media, television and books, the state does not have the ability to censor electronic media and lacks specific laws for prosecution.

“The government is now in the process of establishing laws that will allow government entities to regulate the use of the different new media outlets such as Twitter in order to safeguard the cohesiveness of the population and society,” Information Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Mubarak Al-Sabah said.

While the Kuwaiti press enjoys greater freedom than media outlets in some other Gulf states, it is under government surveillance and there are certain “red lines” local journalists know they must not cross, including direct criticism of Kuwait’s ruler, regional heads of state, religious figures and religions.

The government also clamps down on comments deemed to incite sectarian tension.

Kuwait has so far used its criminal code to bring charges against individuals for slander or libel.

KUWAIT (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti artist whose pictures of men were deemed “obscene” by authorities said she would keep on producing art that challenged perceptions of society in the Gulf Arab state after her exhibition was shut down.

Officials sent by the government told the gallery showing Shurooq Amin’s work to close her “It’s a Man’s World” exhibition last month, three hours after it opened, the artist said.

The works were “indecent” and “obscene”, a notice from the Commerce Ministry, seen by Reuters, said. Officials from the ministry – which issues licenses for art galleries to operate – declined repeated requests to comment.

Amin said officials focused on two of her 16 works – a painting of a woman in a mini-dress sitting on a man’s lap entitled “My Mistress and Family” and a picture showing three men playing cards and drinking “grape juice” from a bottle which suggested contraband alcohol.

An Interior Ministry spokesman also declined to comment.

“I am going to continue to paint and I am going to continue to push the envelope. If anything, this is making me more determined than ever and more stubborn than ever,” Amin told Reuters.

She has held nine solo exhibitions in Kuwait, including one called “Society Girls” in 2010 about the role of women in society, which she said sparked debate but was not banned.

KUWAIT (Reuters) – In most countries, a 25 percent pay rise would buy peace from labor unions, at least temporarily. When Kuwait’s cabinet announced such a rise for government employees this month, customs workers responded by going on strike, followed by staff at the state airline.

The oil-rich emirate escaped the kind of violent anti-government protests seen elsewhere in the Middle East during last year’s “Arab Spring” uprisings. But it is paying a price in the form of relentlessly escalating wage demands which a weak cabinet is proving unable to resist.

Labor unions, emboldened by populist sentiment stemming from the Arab Spring, are pressing their case with industrial action. Meanwhile, the cabinet has been undermined politically by a snap election last month that saw the Islamist-led opposition win control of parliament.

The result is an upward spiral of wage settlements which can be absorbed in the short term, thanks to the country’s oil wealth, but which could threaten economic stability in the long term, officials and analysts say.

“It is like dealing with a child. When he cries you give him chocolate to stop crying. This is a disaster; this is not a professional way to manage a country,” said Naser al-Nafisi of the Al-Joman Centre, an independent economic consultancy based in Kuwait.

“The pay rises should happen in a reasonable way, not by giving a rise to one group and not to another. There should be for example a raise every year or every three years in line with inflation, not 50 percent or 100 percent or 25 percent without any economic consideration.”

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