Staff Writer

A new amended clause added to the Nationality and Boarders Bill allow the UK government to strip a person’s citizenship without warning. Clause 9 now allows the government to strip citizenship without warning, if it isn’t in the ‘public interest’, impacts diplomatic relations, and isn’t practical to do so. This would allow Downing Street to strip citizenship of those it deems antagonistic, and more significantly, descendants living the country, who use the country’s freedoms to highlight human rights in other countries, if it is deemed to be impacting bilateral relations and UK interests.

Speaking to Radio Islam International, Dr Fatima Regina, an academic specialising in citizenship, noted that the government has increasingly already been stripping citizenship, the case of Shamema Begum being the most famous in recent years. Further, she also noted how children prior to the age of 21 were deemed by the UK to have dual citizenship, which these children aren’t made aware of; this is then used as a possible excuse to strip citizenship as if it were a privilege, when in actual case it was a right. Regina said, “I don’t want people listening to think that this is just a new thing that is emerging. It is sort of officially being enshrined into law, but this has already been happening to a lot of people of colour. So not just Muslims…….one of the biggest scandals we witnessed in contemporary British history is the targeting of particularly the Caribbean community, which was known as the Windrush Scandal.”

She further noted how this has increased anxiety, especially amongst Muslims and Africans, especially after the Begum scandal. Moreover, she noted that this was not a surprise since this was aftercall, the conservative party. In addition, Regina argued that the fact that officials such as Sajid Javed and Priti Patel, both of South East Asian descent, were in authority during the passage of these laws, does not mean that they’re somewhat being used, “I think that that’s maybe dangerous because then it would be, we would presume that somehow, because of the sort of heritage background of [the individuals], that somehow they should know better.. these two individuals are part of a conservative party, a party that tends to advocate for a lot of things on the right of the political spectrum.”