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“extreme and secretive” ones risk costing millions of British Muslims their citizenship.
Research published by the Runnymede Trust and Reprieve found as many as nine million people in the UK, or around 13 per cent of the population, could have their citizenship revoked at the discretion of the UK Home Office.
According to activists, the force disproportionately impacts and harms citizens of South Asian, Middle Eastern and African ancestry.
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“The previous government revoked the citizenship of British human trafficking victims for political gain, and the current government is expanding these extreme and secretive powers,” Reprieve activist Maya Foa told Middle East Eye.
“The nine million people whose rights were stripped away by the next interior minister have good reason to worry about what a fully authoritarian government might do,” he added.
The two organizations warned the “regime of plunder” was now a systematic threat to Muslim communities.
Foa’s concerns were echoed by Runnymede Trust activist Shabna Begum who said the policy had a “terrifying undercurrent of citizenship deprivation” and its disproportionate impact on Muslim communities in Britain.
This echoes the state’s discrimination against British citizens with family ties to the Caribbean in the Windrush scandal.
“Just like the laws that led to the Windrush scandal, there are no effective checks in place to prevent these powers being widely used,” Begum told MEE.
Under current law, British citizens can lose their citizenship if the government deems them to be eligible for another nationality, even if they have never lived in or identified with that country.
Activists say this creates a racial hierarchy of citizenship, where Muslims’ presence in Britain is conditional, as opposed to white British citizens.
“Citizenship is a right, not a privilege. However, successive governments advanced a two-tiered approach to citizenship, setting the dangerous precedent that a person’s citizenship can be revoked for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behavior, no matter how many generations your family has lived in this country.”
However, the British Home Office had no comment at the time of writing.
Previously, Reprieve and Runnymede’s analysis showed three in five people of color were at risk of having their British citizenship revoked, compared to one in 20 white people.
The report added that people of color are at 12 times greater risk than white people.
Since 2010, more than 200 people have had their citizenship revoked on the grounds of “benefiting the public interest”, with the majority being Muslims.
In 2022, the government gained the authority to revoke citizenship without notifying the individual.
Then, the 2025 law ensures that even if a court decides that revoking citizenship is unlawful, people cannot gain their citizenship until the government’s appeals, which sometimes take years, are completed.
(rnp/dna)
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