• Citizenship revoked: Key US ally Bahrain strips dissenters of their nationality

    Hasan Jamali / AP file

    Bahrain riot police watch as a protester holds up a picture of jailed political leader Hassan Mushaima with the words "Mushaima is in danger," during a protest in Duraz, Bahrain, on Friday. Mushaima's son is on the list of people whose citizenship has been revoked.

    By Ian Johnston, NBC News

    Bahrain’s government said Wednesday that it had revoked the citizenship of 31 Bahrainis, described by human rights activists as mostly former political detainees.

    Two human rights groups, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, issued a joint statement expressing their “grave concern over the systematic targeting of prominent political activists, former members of parliament, clerics and others.”

    They called on the United States, U.K., United Nations and others to put pressure on the Bahraini authorities to reverse the decision and allow freedom of expression, and also to “immediately stop the systematic and widespread human-rights violations.”

    'Damage to state security'
    Bahrain, a small island kingdom, is an important ally of the United States as it is home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. There has been significant unrest since pro-democracy protests erupted last year as the Arab Spring movement swept the region.

    The Bahrain News Agency published a brief statement by the Ministry of Interior that cited a law allowing “the re-evaluation of nationality when a holder of the Bahraini citizenship causes damage to state security.”

    It then listed names of 31 people whose citizenship had been revoked, including Ali Hassan Mushaima, the son of the leader of the Haq movement, Hassan Mushaima, who is serving a life sentence.

    “The Minister of Interior will take the necessary measures to implement this in conformity with the kingdom's commitments under international law,” the statement added, saying the people named would be able to appeal.

    Bahrain to citizens living abroad: Spy on countrymen, no protests permitted

    The human rights groups’ statement said the authorities had not provided “substantial evidence” explaining the decisions.

    “It is apparent that the actions taken by the Bahraini authorities to revoke the citizenships of 31 individuals is intended to punish them for expressing peaceful dissent and thereby intimidate others from exercising their right to freedom of expression,” it said. “This comes at a time when the crackdown in Bahrain by the authorities is intensifying, and in light of continued international inaction, will continue to deteriorate.”

    Saudi Arabia-Bahrain union plan set to inflame tensions with Iran?

    Mohammed al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, told NBC News that about 70 percent of the people on the list were former political detainees.

    Some on the list are living abroad with at least eight in the U.K., and others in Iran, Iraq, Sweden and Australia. Some of those have been granted political asylum by other countries, al-Maskati said.

    Security forces fire tear gas as they crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators who have vowed to disrupt the race. Bahrain's monarchy is desperate to show the world that the country is a safe place for the race.

    Grand Prix races on as streets in Bahrain morph into battle zone

    For those living in Bahrain, al-Maskati said the effects of withdrawal of citizenship would likely be serious.

    He said they would not be able to access education, private or public health care, or receive government benefits. He added that this would also apply to the men’s wives and children.

    “If you don’t have a passport, you don’t have a national ID; if you don’t have a national ID, you cannot do anything in Bahrain,” al-Maskati said.

    Bahrain breaks up anniversary protest, deports US activists

    He said it remained to be seen what the legal status of the men would be.

    “We don’t know what action they will take against them, if they will ask them to leave the country or they will let them … take their case to the courts. We don’t know what legal status they will find themselves in now.”


    However, he noted that the official statement said that the people concerned would be able to appeal.

    Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that “everyone has the right to a nationality,” and “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”

    In a separate statement, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights said it was concern at reports that a detainee, Adnan Al-Mansi, 22, had been subjected to “severe physical torture, including sexual assaults” after his arrest.

    The center said al-Mansi had been accused of making a bomb, but it said he was “a prisoner of conscience detained solely on the basis of his political opinion.”

    NBC News requested a comment from the Bahrain Embassy in the U.K., but a response was not immediately received.

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  • Want a European Union passport? Just invest $322,000 in Hungary

    Attila Kisbenedek / AFP - Getty Images, file

    Fireworks burst over the Danube River in Budapest on August 20, 2012 during a celebration marking Hungary's national day.

    By Reuters

    BUDAPEST - Lawmakers in indebted European Union member Hungary are waving the prospect of a passport at well-heeled foreign investors.

    Proposed legislation listed on parliament's website would grant permanent residency and ultimately Hungarian citizenship to outsiders who buy at least 250,000 euros ($322,600) worth of special government bonds.

    Hungarian passport holders are entitled to live and work throughout the European Union.


    The move, backed by the ruling government party, is designed to attract new investors, especially from China.

    Hungary has billions of euros worth of foreign currency debt maturing in the next few years and has explored a variety of ways to refinance.

    Chinese investors targeted
    Its plans include selling euro-denominated bonds to domestic buyers and trying to attract major new investors from Asia. Selling debt in western bond markets would happen only after tricky talks with international lenders wrap up, the government has said.

    Budapest has asked for a financing backstop from the EU and the International Monetary Fund, but talks are dragging on and analysts see only a 50 percent chance of a deal.

    Hungary President Pal Schmitt quits in plagiarism scandal

    The proposed legislation calls for the debt management office to issue special "residency bonds" to foreigners. Holders of at least a quarter of a million euros' worth of the bonds would get preferential immigration treatment.

    "The goal of the modification is to create the institution of 'investor residency' in Hungary," the lawmakers who put forth the legislation wrote in their proposal.

    "The proposal ties gaining citizenship to buying bonds because it intends to aid state financing this way," they wrote. "Other investments from those applying for such residency could boost the real estate, retail and investment markets."

    'Putinization' spreading to Hungary, Ukraine, US group warns

    One of the authors of the proposal said Chinese investors were specifically targeted.

    "The Chinese have articulated repeatedly that we should help their Hungarian investments," ruling party lawmaker Mihaly Babak told the daily Nepszabadsag. "If someone is a Hungarian citizen they have more (investment) opportunities."

    "The condition of a preferential process is the purchase of 250,000 euros worth of bonds with a five year maturity ... We can attract capital from the so-called Third World this way and also finance reducing state debt." 

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  • Descendants of Holocaust victims reclaim German citizenship

    Courtesy Suzanne Houchin

    Suzanne Houchin, when she was 8 years old, with her grandfather, Bruno Gumpert. Suzanne now has a German passport, even though her grandfather was stripped of his German citizenship under the Nuremberg laws during the Nazi era.

    By Don Snyder, Special to NBC News

    Tens of thousands of Jews are choosing to become German citizens.

    Unreal?

    It’s happening.

    A study at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University study found 100,000 Israelis have German passports.

    During the Nazi era, the 1935 Nuremberg racial laws stripped Jews of German citizenship. But since May 1949, German law gives Jews who fled Nazi Germany the right to German citizenship, including all their descendants. 

    “This is the largest group of German passport holders in the world outside Germany,” said Emmanuel Nachshon, Deputy Ambassador at the Israeli embassy in Berlin.

    There are an estimated 15,000 Israelis in Berlin, drawn there to work, study and enjoy Berlin’s intellectual life and cheap rents. “It’s the single most interesting and dynamic city certainly in Europe and perhaps in the world,” said Nachshon.

    Israelis comfortable in Germany
    Maya Nathan agrees. The 33-year-old Israeli student with a German passport said “I fell in love with Berlin, its freedom, its great space.”

    Nathan is not uncomfortable about living in the country responsible for the Holocaust. “Our family was never anti-German,” she said, adding that she knows Israelis who won’t come to Germany.

    Courtesy Nadav Gablinger / Courtesy Nadav Gablinger

    Nadav Gablinger, an Israeli tour guide who lives and works in Berlin.

    Nathan, who has been in Germany for two and a half years, is getting a neuropsychology degree at the University of Magdeburg. She plans to remain in Germany.

    Nadav Gablinger, 39, is a tour guide who has lived in Berlin for 11 years. An Israeli with German citizenship, he and his Israeli wife have two children in German schools.

    Noting that Holocaust history is everywhere in Berlin, Gablinger says that present-day Germany is a very safe place for Jews.

    “Today I can say as a Jew, Germany is the safest place in the world,” he says, “Safer than in Israel.”

    Nachshon speculated that many Israelis hold second passports in case things go wrong in Israel. 

    American granddaughter of Holocaust victims: ‘We made it back’
    Increasing numbers of American Jews are also seeking German citizenship.

    According to German government figures, 3,663 Americans, mostly Jews, acquired German citizenship between 2003 and 2010.

    German citizenship allows American Jews not only to live and work in Europe, but also access to a free university education. So it could be that some seek German citizenship so they can live and work elsewhere in Europe.

    “Berlin is becoming one of the most exciting capital cities in Europe, and it exerts a pull,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin. “Many of the new Jewish citizens say they have some history in Germany and they want to discover it.” 

    Suzanne Houchin, a 50-year-old photographer from Los Angeles, is one of them. She and 10 other family members received German passports two years ago.  

    Courtesy Of Suzanne Houchin

    Bruno and Hedwig Gumpert, Suzanne Houchin's grandparents, seen in 1939 shortly before they fled Nazi Germany.

    Houchin’s grandparents, Bruno and Hedwig Gumpert, who owned a department store in the city center, fled Berlin in 1939.

    “My grandparents would talk about their wonderful childhood in Berlin and how much they loved Germany,” she said in a telephone interview. “They were our bedrock and they meant the world to us.”

    Explaining her feelings about becoming a naturalized German, Houchin said: “It felt like this was a way of honoring them, getting back something that was stolen from them.” She tearfully added, “Mein opa (my grandfather), we made it back to the land that you loved so much. This makes my heart happy.”

    Dr. Ruth: ‘Hitler did not want me to have children’… now they can become citizens
    Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the 83-year-old renowned sex therapist, born in Frankfurt, is also proud of her German citizenship, acquired in September 2007.

    When she was 10 years old, Westheimer’s parents put her on one of the last trains to a children’s sanctuary in Switzerland. After the war, she learned her family had been killed.

    “Hitler did not want me to have children, or grandchildren,” she said in a telephone interview. “Now that I have a German passport, my grandchildren can study anywhere in Europe.”

    But Edward Levy, 30, a naturalized German from Chicago, is wary. “Sometimes I wonder what the older generation [of Germans] really thinks,” he said. “If they knew I was Jewish and my grandparents were Jewish.”

    Seattle-born Jordan Selig, 25, relishes her new life in the gritty Kreutzberg district of Berlin. A Columbia University graduate, she buys apartments to renovate as rentals. Her grandparents fled the Nazis on the trans-Siberian railroad to China. She said they boarded the last passenger ship to leave for the United States before war broke out.

    “It’s so much more comfortable and international to live here than in most big cities,” she observed.

    As time passes, gets easier
    “Berlin is the place to be for young people,” said Nirit Bialer, a 33-year-old Israeli and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. “There’s a lot of space here, and there is freedom and acceptance of artistic innovation. Individuality is strong here. In Israel, the collective is much stronger.”

    Bialer runs Projekt Habait, a German-Israeli social program to inform Germans about Israeli culture. “Many of the Israelis here are engaged in the art scene and some are known here. However, there is a big hunger among Germans to learn about us.”

    The Holocaust remains an open wound for many Jews. But Berger, from the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, believes the wound will heal.

    “I think it’s getting easier for third and fourth generation Americans with German roots to look at Germany in a more open-minded way as the distance from the Holocaust grows.”