To silence dissidents, Gulf states are revoking their citizenship  Many are left stateless as a result. – The Economist

The Economist “newspaper” is worried that nations are beginning to use passports as a way to punish people that leaders don’t like.

This article focuses mainly on the Middle East, especially Bahrain, which the article calls an “energetic stripper.”

More here:

Bahrain’s … Sunni royals have dangled the threat of statelessness over its Shia majority to suppress an uprising launched in 2011, during the Arab spring.

In 2014 it stripped 21 people of their nationality. A year later the number was up tenfold. “Gulf rulers have turned people from citizens into subservient subjects,” says Abdulhadi Khalaf, a former Bahraini parliamentarian whose citizenship was revoked in 2012 and now lives safely in Sweden.

“Our passports are not a birthright. They are part of the ruler’s prerogative.”  Neighbouring states are following