Kuwait: 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 spill-over from turmoil in nearby states and Syria.

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

Authorities are particularly sensitive to developments in Bahrain. Kuwait also borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and sits across the Gulf from non-Arab Shiite power Iran.

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

Platform

"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 Jasem 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.

"You have the extreme Islamists in Kuwait and you have a tension between Saudi and Iran. This is fuelling the discussion here," said Al Qamis, who has written online about the unrest in Bahrain and has 2,000 followers tracking his Twitter messages.

"People are becoming proxies of powers in the region. Kuwait has become a battlefield for this."

Shiites 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.

Unreasonable behaviour mars online debate

For several commentators, unreasonable behaviour, rather than simply freedom of speech, is at the heart of the Kuwaiti debate. They think some users are ill-mannered and insulting, and stirring trouble rather than engaging in serious debate.

"People can be so negligent, and it is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of insulting others," said academic and human rights expert Ganim Al Najar, who has attracted nearly 24,000 followers in the four months since he joined Twitter.

He has used his online presence to object to introducing the death penalty for insulting Islam and to campaign on behalf of Kuwait's stateless. Najar said sectarianism in Kuwait is not as bad as it appears.

"There is a balance. But the voices of sectarianism are much louder and compounded by events on the ground in Syria and Bahrain and the eastern province of Saudi, Iran."

Critics of the government's approach say people arrested for their online comments are being used as scapegoats. They argue that the authorities have managed to draw even more attention to sectarian issues through their actions.

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