The United Kingdom’s decision to revoke the citizenship of Shamima Begum, a British teenager who travelled from London in 2015 to The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS)-controlled Syria, highlights a deeply founded two-tier system, legal experts have said.

Begum’s case has created a media frenzy since the-now 19-year-old appealed in a television interview last month to be allowed to return home with her newborn son.

Some experts say the Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s decision to strip her of her citizenship is not unique and points towards a racist policy that has for years targeted British citizens of immigrant backgrounds. 

After Javid notified Begum’s parents of his decision to revoke her citizenship on February 19, British media reported that the action was taken on the grounds that she could obtain another passport because of her Bangladeshi heritage. 

While Begum’s parents are of Bangladeshi heritage, she was born in Britain and has never travelled to Bangladesh. She does not hold a Bangladeshi passport, according to her lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee.

He is challenging the move, saying it leaves the 19-year-old stateless.

Prominent precedents

Although Begum’s case led to international media attention, it is not the first of its kind.

Legal experts and campaigners have pointed towards several other occasions of Britain revoking nationality.

“The suggestion that this [case of Shamima Begum] is setting some kind of precedent is completely untrue. There are multiple cases of nationality revocation even before the existence of ISIS,” Moazzam Begg, head of outreach at the UK-based campaign group CAGE, told Al Jazeera. 

Under the 1981 British Nationality Act, the UK home secretary has the power to revoke someone’s citizenship if they are “satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good”.

While the legal concept upon which these powers were founded had become dormant, they were updated under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act in 2002, allowing the UK home secretary to strip nationals of the citizenship on national security grounds, without prior approval from the courts.

It clearly appears to be a two-tier and racist system.

Moazzam Begg, head of outreach at the UK-based campaign group CAGE

The act was amended again in 2006, allowing the British government to remove citizenship of dual nationals who are considered “not conducive to the public good”. It maintained the prohibition of rendering someone stateless.

People affected can appeal the decision in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a court that deals with cases of national security and where evidence is heard in secret.

According to a report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in 2016, the-then home secretary Theresa May stripped 33 dual nationals of their British nationality on terror-related grounds since 2010. The number of nationality revocations for other reasons brought the total to 70. 

One of the earliest cases was Abu Hamza, an Egypt-born, Muslim cleric who was stripped of his British passport in 2003, but later appealed and won the case, only for the decision to be overturned in 2010. 

Other prominent cases include Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks who gained and lost his British citizenship in a matter of hours in July 2006, and Russian spy Anna Chapman who was arrested by the FBI in the US and stripped of her British passport in 2010.

More recent cases include Britons who allegedly joined the fight in Syria, such as the 20 people whose citizenship was revoked by the home secretary in 2013. 

Others include Mahdi Hashi, who was stripped of his British citizenship while living in Somalia in 2012, and E2 – as referred to in media reports – who lost his nationality in 2012 while visiting family in Pakistan. 

On Monday, British media reported that 31-year-old aid worker Tauqir Sharif and his family were stuck in Syria after his UK citizenship was revoked and his eldest daughter was refused a passport. 

Two-tier system 

According to CAGE’s Begg, the policy targets Britons from an immigrant or Muslim background. 

“There were around 36 cases of nationality revocation in 2014, all of which hailed from a Muslim country, with the exception of one, a Russian,” he told Al Jazeera. “It [the policy] clearly appears to be a two-tier and racist system.”

“There are many cases where people have had their nationality revoked based upon secret evidence, evidence you cannot challenge, cannot see, nor can your lawyers see,” said Begg. “That throws up another issue: What is the British government doing using secret evidence?”

Although previous amendments to the Nationality Act maintained that making someone stateless is prohibited, a 2014 amendment to the Act allows UK citizenship to be removed if there are “reasonable grounds for believing” the person would be able to become a citizen of another country.

In the home secretary’s letter to Sharif, he described the aid worker as a “British-Pakistani dual national”.

The whole policy is inherently racist and discriminatory in its application. It can only be used against British citizens who are the children of immigrants.

Fahad Ansari, lawyer

Although Javid has said that he did not use this measure in Begum’s case, Akunjee, her lawyer, argues that the move has in effect made her stateless and breached international law.  

“The UK home secretary is violating international law by stripping people of their citizenship on a whim. This can only be done when someone is deemed a dual national,” said Akunjee.

“The reality is Shamima Begum was born, bred and radicalised in the UK, and then she travelled to Syria. None of this has anything to do with Bangladesh.”

“In her [Begum’s] case, we got a very clear message from the Bangladeshi government which would suggest that, according to their view of their law, she is not a citizen, nor will she be able to avail herself of any citizenship at this junction. Given that position, she is technically stateless.”

Following Javid’s move, Bangladesh’s Minister for Home Affairs  Asaduzzaman Khan said Begum’s case had “nothing to do” with Dhaka. 

Fahad Ansari, a UK lawyer who has overturned decisions to revoke the citizenship of two Britons of Bangladeshi origin, said identity was at the core of the issue.

“The whole policy is inherently racist and discriminatory in its application. It can only be used against British citizens who are the children of immigrants,” he told Al Jazeera. “The idea being it is only against those who are perceived as never having belonged in the UK in the first place.”

China will cut billions of dollars in taxes and fees, boost infrastructure spending, and step up lending to small firms to shore up an economy expanding at its slowest pace in nearly three decades.

The government is targeting GDP growth of between 6-6.5 percent this year, Prime Minister Li Keqiang said at Tuesday’s opening of the annual meeting of China’s legislature. Three-quarters of provinces have already lowered their annual growth targets this year, especially in export-driven coastal areas.

“In pursuing development this year, we will face a graver and more complicated environment as well as risks and challenges, foreseeable and otherwise, that are greater in number and size,” Li told the nearly 3,000 delegates from across the country who had gathered under smoggy skies and tight security for the two-week session.      

“We must be fully prepared for a tough struggle,” he said.

GDP expanded 6.6 percent in 2018, the slowest pace since 1990.

Trade war

The slowdown and a simmering trade war with the United States have turned into major challenges for President Xi Jinping, one year after the congress made him the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong by abolishing term limits and etching his name into China’s constitution.

Relations with the US deteriorated sharply last year after President Donald Trump hit roughly half of Chinese imports with new tariffs in an attempt to force trade concessions.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday he thought the two countries were “on the cusp” of a deal to end their trade war, adding to recent positive signs about negotiations from both sides of the Pacific.

We will “continue to promote China-US trade negotiations”, Li told delegates, and will settle “trade disputes through discussions as equals”.

To help shore up the economy, China will lower corporate taxes and employer contributions to social security and reduce red tape.

The government will also monitor closely the job situation at exporters heavily exposed to the US market, Li said.

The government aims to create more than 11 million new urban jobs this year and keep the urban unemployment rate within 4.5 percent, he added, unchanged from its 2018 goals.

China last year cut taxes and fees worth 1.3 trillion yuan and allowed local governments to issue 1.35 trillion yuan in special bonds to fund major projects.

The special bond issuance quota for local governments has been set at 2.15 trillion yuan, the finance ministry said in a report on Tuesday, as China ramps up infrastructure investment.

Boosting lending

This year, the government has set a budget deficit target of 2.8 percent of GDP, up from last year’s 2.6 percent, reflecting the reduction in taxes and higher government spending.

Pauline Loong of Asia-Analytica in Hong Kong told Al Jazeera the measures together indicate a sea change in China’s approach to the economy.

“The tax cut is part of a broader plan to stimulate the economy for growth,” she said.

“But what is important is not the numbers themselves, the more important takeaway is that the Chinese government it giving its people a new narrative on economic policy. Only last year we were hearing about things like de-leveraging, how we must make sure the economy is balanced. This year the message is entirely about growth.”

China has lowered reserve requirements for commercial banks five times in the past year to boost lending to small and private companies – vital for growth and jobs.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the state planner, said a balance needed to be struck between stabilising economic growth and fending off risks in a report released on Tuesday.

The legislature will next week pass a new law regulating foreign investment, in a move that could help ease US trade tensions.  

The legislation will bar the forced transfer of technology by foreign firms to Chinese joint venture partners, a major bone of contention with the United States.

Image: THE WASHINGTON POST / GETTY

US senators left a closed-door briefing with Trump administration officials frustrated by the lack of new information on the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The meeting on the status of the investigation into Khashoggi’s assassination on Monday came amid rising tensions between the White House and Congress over the US-Saudi relationship.

“It was a complete waste of time. I knew more than they did,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of President Donald Trump on many issues, told reporters.

Graham said it was time for more action, but did not elaborate.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio said he didn’t learn anything new from the briefing. Moving forward, he said, “the Senate will have to decide if it’s going to impose its own sanctions” on the government of Saudi Arabia.

Khashoggi, a writer for The Washington Post, was killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul last year by Saudi agents. The Saudi government said the murder was carried out by “rouge” operatives and denied the involvement of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

American lawmakers, however, have said they believe Prince Mohammed ordered the killing, but Trump has been reluctant to place blame.

‘Zero’ information

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said the briefing contained “zero” new information and expressed frustration by the lack of an intelligence official among the briefers, a move he described as “purposeful”.

“They don’t want us to have a conversation about the intelligence,” he said, referring to the White House. “These folks had no new information and were not permitted to give us any new information.”

Bob Menendez, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said new sanctions should be levied, possibly via legislation he co-sponsored with Graham.

“I think the Senate’s going to have to act unless it is willing to accept the death of a US resident journalist as an acceptable action because of a broader relationship. I don’t accept that,” Menendez said.

The Trump administration missed a February deadline to report to Congress on who was responsible for Khashoggi’s death. The report was required after lawmakers last year triggered a provision of the 2016 Global Magnitsky human rights act requiring a Trump administration investigation.

“The Senate needs to act. Otherwise, Global Magnitsky will have no consequence and any administration, this one or another, can just ignore it,” Menendez said.

Khashoggi, a critic of the Riyadh government, was killed and his body dismembered on October 2, 2018 in Istanbul.

His body has never been found. Turkish investigators believe it was taken in bags from the consulate to the consulate general’s residence a few hundred metres away and incinerated in a high-powered oven.

Khashoggi’s killing has fuelled simmering discontent in Washington over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and heavy civilian casualties in Yemen’s civil war, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

Defence deals

Meanwhile, US company Lockheed Martin Corp will receive the first payment towards the installation a $15bn missile defence system in Saudi Arabia as part of a $110bn arms package the Trump administration negotiated with the kingdom in 2017, the Pentagon said on Monday.

The Pentagon awarded Lockheed a $946m payment for the foreign military sale. Saudi Arabia is purchasing 44 THAAD launchers, missiles and related equipment.

Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said though the timing of the announcement was coincidental, there could be criticism of the Saudi deal moving forward.

“The agreement was reached two years ago that the US would provide this technology to Saudi Arabia in order to deal with what the US has called ‘malign Iranian influence’ across the greater Middle East,” she said.