The news broke earlier this week that the Home Office backed, inevitably, by Teresa May, plans to “find a way of overturning international human rights conventions”, and seize the power to confiscate the passports of suspected terrorists, rendering them stateless. Ms. May has repeatedly argued that “a passport is a privilege, not a right”.
The news comes after a series of frustrating events for the Home Secretary. Hilal Al-Jedda, for example, was granted British citizenship in 1998 but had his passport revoked after allegedly having links with terrorist groups in Iraq, and plotting attacks on British soldiers. However given that his Iraqi citizenship was automatically annulled when he took British nationality, the confiscation of his passport made him stateless, breaching his right to liberty. In October the Supreme Court ruled in his favour and Ms. May has been ordered to return his British passport.
The Home Office have concentrated on case studies such as Al-Jedda’s to illustrate how we must tackle “the enemy within” by expelling them without. And of course, if found guilty, his right to liberty will be lawfully retracted in accordance with the Human Rights Act. But there is a reason this man is not behind bars, and it is because there is insufficient evidence to place him there. And as there is insufficient evidence to charge him, it seems that revoking his passport and leaving him stateless is hardly a fair punishment. If anything, it shows that Teresa May has very little faith in the judicial system, when she is willing to overthrow international human rights acts. Hardly the actions of a democratic leader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rRPQOwPSTg
Before the 1960s, many western states were legally able to strip citizens of their citizenship if they had reasonable grounds to believe that said citizen proved a danger to national security, but in practice this power was rarely used. The US supreme court deemed it “a cruel and unusual punishment”.
‘There may be involved no physical mistreatment, no primitive torture. There is instead the total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society. It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development….His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself….In short, the expatriate has lost the right to have rights.’
US Supreme Court 1958
Critics viewed it as an “an arbitrary and overweening power inappropriate for a democratic society” and by the 1960s this Orwellian punishment had all but vanished. Until now.
Since Teresa May took office in May 2010 she has stripped at least 20 terror suspects of their passports, many of them born and raised in Britain. Although the law promises that anyone denaturalised by the Home Office will be guaranteed the right to a fair appeal, the dubious method by which May has gone about exercising her powers mean that those affected are often out the of the country the moment their passport is revoked, thus making it extremely difficult to re-enter the country and exercise that right. The British government is then able to wash their hands of the individual, leaving them vulnerable to illegal detention and torture abroad, and with no legal or moral obligation to intervene, or offer assistance and protection. Leading human rights lawyer Gareth Pierce has described the Home Secretary’s actions as ‘cruel and arbitrary’ that ‘smack of medieval exile’.
And these cruel and arbitrary actions have directly resulted in murders, the most prominent of which Mr. Mohamed Sakr, a British-born man with dual Egyptian nationality, whose whereabouts was traced by the US authorities after he made a call to the UK. Mr Sakr had his citizenship revoked after heading to Somalia, leaving him open to an ‘ultimately lethal US manhunt’. It is worth reiterating the point that Mr. Sakr, along with the other 19 men who have been stripped of their citizenship, was a terror suspect. He had not been found guilty. Peep Show’s Mark Corrigan, a much respected and authoritative voice, could easily answer Teresa May’s logic the same way he does to Jeremy Usborne when he retorts “Is that what 1000 years of British Judicial Law has come down to? No smoke without fire?!”
Theresa May giving a speech to Home Office staff. Image credit: ukhomeoffice
In short, democracy requires evidence in order to punish and detain criminals; the Home Office’s proposal to denaturalise suspects does not comply with this basic democratic principle. So far she has swiped the nationality of many dual-citizens; if she gains the power she seeks to be able to render stateless those with sole British nationality, the consequences for the individual, as well as the international community would be profound.
Let’s refer back to Ms. May’s simplistic declaration: ‘a passport is a privilege, not a right’. Perhaps. But in our age of international politics, a passport has come to embody the notion of a right. Of an international human right. The right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. The right to be equal before the law and entitled to equal protection of the law. The right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal. Without citizenship these rights are inevitably denied. Statelessness as a punishment in a democracy can never be an option.
