Bahrain Mirror: The Australia-based Gulf Institute for Democracy & Human Rights (GDHR) launched on Monday (October 17, 2016), its report on the citizenship revocation in Bahrain, entitled, "Revocation of Citizenships: The Silent Execution."

In a statement, the institute confirmed that it provided a copy of the report to each of the Australian Foreign Minister Jolie Bishop, and the Australian parliamentary Human Rights Committee, and the High Commissioner of Human Rights prince Zayd bin Raad.

Moreover, the institute indicated that the Bahraini regime relies on Article 10 of the Bahraini citizenship law, which allows the strip off someone' citizenship if ordered by the ruler in many cases. The amendments inserted to the law granted the Interior Minister the authority to request a citizenship revocation for many reasons among which are "harming the kingdom's interests, or acting in a way that contradicts to the duty of loyalty [to the kingdom]." In addition, amendments were introduced to the Terrorism Law, which permitted revoking citizenships of those indicted with certain crimes.

According to the report, Bahrain has revoked the citizenships of 304 citizens since the February 14, 2011 uprising. "The Bahraini authorities revoked the citizenships of 304 citizens including clerics, academics, former MPs, journalists, human rights and political activists and bloggers," GDHR stated in its report.

Furthermore, the report indicated that the decision to revoke a citizenship is not limited "to depriving the citizens from belonging to their home country, but rather affects various fields of the lives of the victims and their families." It clarified that it affects their lives on the social, civil, political, legal, and security levels, due to the official authorities' implementation of these arbitrary decisions.

Arabic Version