“Six activists were jailed after challenging the president of the UAE’s decision to revoke their citizenship for alleged terrorist links. On April 9, the authorities in Abu Dhabi arrested six human rights activists whose UAE citizenship had earlier been revoked. This had been done on the grounds that they endangered the state and had links to “suspicious regional and international organizations and figures,” some allegedly listed by the UN as suspected of financing terrorism. The six men – Sheikh Muhammad al-Sidiq, Ali al-Hussein al-Hamadi, Shaheen al-Hawsni, Hussein Munif al-Jaberi, Hassan Munif al-Jaberi, and Ibrahim al-Marzouqi – are all naturalised Emiratis. Five of them obtained UAE citizenship in the 1970s, one in the 1980s. Four of them had originally come to the country from Iran, and two from Yemen. The group had mounted a legal challenge to the decision to strip them of their citizenship………………”

It says: they obtained citizenship only in the 1970s. I know of hundreds of thousands who obtained citizenship in the 1970s through 1990s in the Gulf GCC states. Quite a few of them are annoying the hell out of people in at least one Gulf country these days. But those others are not activists, they are super reactionaries, a throwback to another century and another country. In Bahrain the potentates are still doing it, naturalizing foreign mercenaries and adding them to their growing collection of security thugs and torturers.
Cheers
mhg


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