A forgotten hellhole in northeast Syria impacts millions in the UK
TThe sandstorm intensified so suddenly that the air became dull and the tents began to move. The children scrambled to hide as their mothers prepared for the worst. This is midsummer in northeastern Syria.
Camp Roj and its sister camp Al-Hol host 42,000 people, primarily wives, other adult female relatives and children of ISIS suspects. No one can leave this place, guarded by Kurdish-led forces.
It’s hard to see how this damned, forgotten part of Syria could possibly be relevant to the UK’s 9 million people, but a damning report published on Thursday by Reprieve and the Runnymede Trust explains exactly why.
Roj has 15 to 20 women and 30 to 40 children, mostly under the age of 10, who are somehow connected to the United Kingdom.
The United Nations says the conditions are inhumane, dangerous and degrading, raising serious concerns for international law.
Kurdish-led officials working in the camps tell me they lack the resources to do this indefinitely, especially after USAID’s punitive cuts.
However, many of those affiliated with the UK in the Roj will remain due to the British government’s policies that make the Roj an outlier in the West.
Even Russia and the United States are taking responsibility for their citizens and bringing them home, a British lawmaker told a meeting of parliament on Wednesday. In contrast, the UK ranks top in the G20 for mass denaturalization of our citizens.
The report states that the British government has stripped Britons of their citizenship through a “two-tiered racist system” that puts millions of people at risk.
The report stated that since 2010 alone, the UK has deprived more than 200 people of citizenship on the grounds of “public interest”, a figure exceeded only by Bahrain and Nicaragua.
Runnymede and Reprieve say the rip-off was done through a “secret” system that allows the stripping of citizenship of Britons with dual citizenship or any naturalized Briton, with little or no access to evidence and without the need for the government to notify them.
The report warns that this “ambiguous” legislation leaves at least 9 million people in total, or 13 per cent of the population, vulnerable to having their citizenship stripped. It also revealed a shocking racial disparity, with black people 12 times more at risk than their white counterparts.
Most of the robberies are Brits (or now ex-Brits) currently stranded here in Syria. The most notable case is Shamima Begum, who was kidnapped by ISIS to the so-called caliphate in Syria in 2015 when she was just 15 years old. He was stripped of his citizenship and became stateless.
This was because the UK had ruled in the year before departure that it could even revoke the citizenship of people who did not hold another passport “if there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person may be a national of another country or territory”. His family is of Bangladeshi origin.
He’s not the only former British citizen stranded here. The day I was in Roj, I talked to a few women, but they couldn’t get on the record.
Some found out they were no longer British when they tried to be repatriated and were informed that the UK did not repatriate foreigners. I learned of a case where a baby was born stateless due to a pregnant woman unknowingly undressing and giving birth.
The Home Office dismissed the report’s findings as “frightening and inaccurate”, adding: “Only a small number of people have had their citizenship revoked in 15 years”.
A spokesman said the system was only used “to protect the British public from the most dangerous individuals, including terrorists and serious organized criminals”.
But in the end, people like Shamima, and even men in ISIS prisons in Syria, have not been formally charged with any crime, tried, or faced any legal action. Children are also caught up in this situation.
The Kurdish-led authorities who hold them have told me repeatedly over the years that they do not have a recognized legal system to prosecute foreigners. They do not have the capacity to manage this problem indefinitely.
The practice of denaturalization is actually a modern development. It fell into almost complete disuse across Europe following World War II, due to disgust at the Nazis’ mass abolition of the status of Jewish citizens.
The report stated that there were no deprivations of citizenship other than fraud in the United Kingdom from 1973 to 2002.
However, this has changed in recent years with the increase in legislation and its use, especially against citizens accused of traveling to Syria to join ISIS.
Reprieve says there has been a more than 4,000 per cent increase in deprivations in the last decade.
Families caught up in this situation describe a frightening system in which “you kind of try to fight back with both hands tied behind your back.” Speaking in statements shared anonymously with the publication of the report, they said that no information was provided.
Faisal, whose brother was stripped of his citizenship, warned that this was a dangerous system that affected us all.
“Everyone is sleepwalking right now. They don’t realize it. Our rights are being eroded over time. Most people don’t know.”
