Kuwait summoned a top U.S. diplomat on Thursday over tweets from the American embassy expressing help for LGBT rights, the nation’s overseas ministry stated.
In a tweet Thursday morning, the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait celebrated the beginning of Pride Month, sharing a message from President Joe Biden in help of LGBT rights.
“All human beings must be handled with respect and dignity and may be capable to dwell with out worry regardless of who they’re or whom they love,” the tweet learn, quoting Biden.
The president, the embassy said, “is a champion for the human rights of #LGBTQI individuals.”
In the hours after the submit went up, Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the emotions shared within the tweet, saying it had summoned U.S. Charges d’Affaires James Holtsnider and given him a memorandum disavowing the submit.
The memorandum stressed “the necessity for the embassy to respect the legal guidelines and laws in pressure within the State of Kuwait and the duty to not publish such tweets,” the foreign ministry said, pointing to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, which provides a framework for diplomatic relations between states.
In Kuwait, same-sex sexual activity between men is criminalized, with sentences including a maximum penalty of seven years’ imprisonment, according to Human Dignity Trust, a non-profit organization based in London, England.
Up till this yr, it was additionally a legal offense to be a trans particular person in Kuwait. A court docket overturned the legislation as unconstitutional in February.
People within the LGBT community, Human Dignity Trust says, “are usually subjected to discrimination and violence” in Kuwait.
Kuwait’s government was not alone in criticizing the U.S. embassy’s tweet, with some social media users also condemning the message, including Kuwaiti MP Osama Al-Shaheen, who condemned the statement in a tweet.
Others from around the world expressed support for the embassy’s message, with Alex Sobel, a British MP with the Labour Party, writing in a tweet: “The response from the Kuwaiti Government is unacceptable.”
“Human Rights are common rights. Solidarity to all on the Embassy,” Sobel wrote.
The State Department did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment from NBC News.
Lawahez Jabari contributed.
