GUEST BLOG: A short history of ‘Dutch statelessness’ after the Spanish Civil War

The Dutch minister of Justice is currently researching the possibility of revoking Dutch passports or even the citizenship of those currently fighting against the Assad regime in Syria. According to the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, Dick Schoof, some one hundred, mostly young people have made the journey from the Netherlands to Syria. While the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats propose to revoke only passports to prevent people travelling to Syria, Geert Wilders’ PVV party asked explicitly to consider revoking Dutch citizenship in the case of double nationality and to deport those former Dutch citizens to the country of citizenship according to their other passport. Liberal Dijkshoorn (VVD) wonders, if those fighters might lose their citizenship in analogy to what was once considered ‘foreign military service’ and asks the minister, if it is possible to revoke as many Dutch citizenships as possible.

In light of the current affairs, it is worth looking at the history of Dutch volunteer fighters in foreign wars. One of these wars was the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Some 600 Dutch volunteers joined the communist International Brigades to fight against Franco and the Nationalists. Another dozen joined the anarchist forces. According to one publication there was also one Dutchman fighting on the side of Franco. The Dutch state chose a politics of non-intervention concerning the civil war in Spain, and a politics of intervention concerning the domestic groups, mostly communist, in support of the Spanish Republic. The Dutch government was aware of groups that started the recruitment of volunteers for the war in Spain. People who had fought in Spain but regretted their choice were helped to return to the Netherlands in exchange for information. Secret agents were used to collect names of Dutch citizens in Spain and helped to collect information pertaining to the manner in which these citizens arrived in Spain.

The problem was that there were no legal means to stop people from leaving the country (as is the case today). What could be done, however, was putting a stamp in new passports that made them invalid for Spain. This probably did not have much effect, as those involved in recruiting and helping volunteers had prior experience in helping German communists who fled persecution in Germany since 1933, sometimes helping them to get to Belgium or France: they had experience in secretly helping people cross the border illegally. Once a volunteer reached the French-Spanish border, the republicans couldn’t care less about their passports, with or without a stamp. They openly welcomed the help offered by the foreign volunteers, especially in the early phase of the conflict.

Another measure by the Dutch state was a communiqué by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in January 1937, stating that those who joined the armed forces in Spain would lose their Dutch citizenship. This was not a new law: according to the Dutch Nationality Law of 1892 article 7, section 4: ‘one loses his or her citizenship by joining foreign military or civil service without Our permission.’ From a legal standpoint, this loss was automatic and not to be considered a punishment. This communiqué must be seen as a measure to restrict travel for future volunteers. It seems, however, as if it didn’t have much of an effect, as most volunteers left the Netherlands after this communiqué.

At the same time, as stated above, the state actively researched the names of those who went to Spain (by, for instance, interviewing family members of those suspected). While revoking their citizenship might have been automatic, acquiring the names of the concerned individuals was anything but. In June 1937, a new royal order was implemented, stating that all acts promoting and assisting participation in one of the forces in Spain are forbidden, thus criminalizing all recruitment activity. All political parties were in favour of this order, except for the communist party (CPN). Despite a few arrests in enforcing this order, recruitment was secretly conducted from the very start and thus hardly affected. Meanwhile, some deserters returned to the Low Countries, stating they were promised work in Spain. Interviews with some of these deserters in the newspaper de Telegraaf draw a picture of poor workless people being press-ganged with false promises. It is most likely the case that these deserters created a story that would ultimately help them in not having their citizenship revoked, e.g.: it was work they were looking for in Spain, not war, and they were forced to fight.

It is estimated that some 250 volunteers lost their citizenship upon returning to the Netherlands, and about 200 volunteers managed to avoid it. As Toon van de Berg stated: ‘It didn’t happen to me, I left in silence, and I came back in even more silence.’ In 1938 the Spanish Republic decided to withdraw all foreign volunteers. This measure was done in the hope to gain more sympathy and help from Western States, especially France and England who were neutral in the conflict. While Germany and Italy officially also were neutral, they supported Franco. The biggest support for the republicans came from the U.S.S.R., and their help was on the decline. At the same time, the political situation in Europe was becoming ever more tense, as Hitler threatened Czechoslovakia with an armed conflict in order to annex the Sudentenland.

In October 1938 a big parade was organized in Barcelona as to see off the foreign volunteers- some 200.000 people gathered to celebrate their departure. The welcome in the Netherlands was a different one. A group of 117 Dutch volunteers entered the country by train in Roosendaal and were welcomed by the Marechaussee and official investigators. The singing of battle songs was forbidden, but as it was 5 December, the day of St Nicholas, the group decided to sing the well-known Dutch St Nicholas song: ‘See over there, the steamboat from Spain is arriving again’, a song that could hardly be forbidden. After all luggage was inspected by the Marechaussee, who were searching for weapons and propaganda material, an official told the group that they had lost their Dutch citizenship. They were served a meal of sauerkraut and bacon, which led afterwards to a discussion in the Dutch parliament: was this meal, paid for by the State, indeed necessary? It is unclear why those volunteers didn’t try to reach the Netherlands without being noticed by the authorities – maybe the group was just too big to do it otherwise. Some 62 volunteers followed later on.

What is striking in the literature about the Dutch volunteers in Spain is that, on the one hand, people were aware of the possibility of losing one’s citizenship by joining the armed forces in the civil war, and, on the other hand, that the fact of losing this citizenship also gets a prominent place in the literature. In my research for my Master’s thesis about loss of citizenship after the German occupation, it felt like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially with regard to other groups than the SS. The fact that the statelessness of the volunteers in the Spanish Civil War receives such a prominent place in the literature is not only due to the indignation of this measure, as the volunteers felt they were fighting the first and just battle against the upcoming fascism in Europe, but also because this statelessness put them in a vulnerable position as soon as the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940. In addition, the process of regaining the Dutch citizenship after the German occupation would become a theatre play with many acts, with the latest known re-naturalisation in 1969.

More on the consequences of statelessness for the Dutch volunteers after the Spanish Civil War and the long way to become a Dutch citizen again in my next blog…

Julia Mattern wrote her master thesis about the loss of citizenship of Dutch volunteers working for the Nazi construction organisation “Organisation Todt” during German occupation (1940-1945). This organisation built e.g. the Atlantic Wall.

Introducing… Ivan Kochovski, intern assisting with research on nationality and statelessness in the MENA region

As I have been a part of the Statelessness Programme for a couple of months now, it is time to introduce myself and the work I have been doing at the Programme. My name is Ivan Kochovski and I am a LLM candidate at Tilburg University following the International and European Public Law programme with a specialisation in International Law and Human Rights. As of October 2012 I am an intern at the Statelessness Programme working on the “Nationality and Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa Project” (MENA Project).

Supervised by both Dr. Van Waas and Ms. Albarazi, I am working on compiling fact-sheets on the situation of statelessness and nationality in each of the MENA countries using country reports prepared by local experts. Recently, I have also been working on a report examining the manner in which the issue of gender discrimination in terms of nationality has been dealt with for the MENA countries at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) - the first universal review process examining all human rights questions in every UN country.

Statelessness is not an easy topic to get involved with. This is not to say that it is extremely difficult, but it is challenging nevertheless. While discussing some of the misconceptions I had about statelessness with my supervisors and colleagues and working on the MENA region, I realized that statelessness is not simply a problem of badly drafted nationality laws or inaccessible nationality procedures that rendered certain people without a nationality. Some of its main causes lie deeply rooted in the past and present political power relations within the countries and the region. The Bidoon in the Gulf Region, the Kurds in Syria, and the Palestinians in the Levant are just some of the groups that have been left stateless due to specific political reasons. This does not mean that the nationality laws of the MENA countries are not deeply problematic or that there aren’t issues with the procedures, but rather that the causes of statelessness are a combination of both legislative and political factors.

For instance, Jordan has a gendered nationality law and does not allow women to transfer their nationality to their children or spouses. Even though such discriminatory legislation can be seen as a purely legal matter, the issue becomes more complex with the fact that there are many Jordanian women married to non-nationals and the country is host to a large stateless Palestinian population. One of the reasons the Jordanian leadership has been reluctant to amend the nationality law, to allow women to pass on their nationality, has been the fear that allowing such a large number of non-nationals to acquire citizenship will create a shift in the demographics and the political constituency, possibly leading to unforeseeable political turmoil. Leaving aside politics for a moment, one must not forget the predicament of the stateless. The recent research of Ms. Albarazi in Jordan showed that many of the stateless in Jordan live in conditions of extreme poverty with no access to healthcare and with no prospects of meaningful education or employment. The discriminatory provisions do not create only problems for the women and their spouses, but perhaps most worryingly for their children. Some of the interviewed women have indicated that their children have no future. The only way out of that situation for the girls is to marry a national and acquire his citizenship. The boys, who have no such possibility of regularizing their status, often drift between illegal jobs and are strongly discouraged by their parents from marrying or having children because that will create only further problems as they will not be able to provide for their family and will transfer the same predicament to the future generations.

Going back to the influence of politics on the issue of statelessness, perhaps the most prominent example in recent years of how nationality can be used as a strong political tool is the 2011 decree issued by Al-Asad’s government allowing a portion of the stateless Syrian Kurds to acquire citizenship. In the 1960’s as part of its Arabization policies the Baath government denationalized more than 20 percent of the Kurdish population. After the civil war broke out in early 2011, the government, in order to gain the support of the Kurdish population adopted a decree that would allow more than half of the 300 000 stateless Kurds to acquire a citizenship. Even though there is limited information on whether this procedure has been implemented and perhaps statelessness is not the top priority in Syria at the moment taking into account the heinous atrocities being committed there, the 2011 decree is one of the clearest examples of how nationality can and is being used for political gains by governments. Syria’s nationality laws are also discriminatory towards women and there are reportedly more than 100,000 women married to non-nationals. As was the case with Jordan, one can see that the issue here is not purely political or purely legal. The Syrian government has also feared that granting more than 100,000 men married to Syrian women and their children nationality might cause a shift in the political dynamics of the state. As in Jordan, the stateless in Syria have lived in dire conditions for years and since the escalation of the violence the situation has grown worse.

There are many more such examples both from the MENA region and other regions in the world. The Nubians in Kenya, the non-citizens in Latvia, the Roma in the Balkans, the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Haitians in the Dominican Republic are just some of the groups in other parts of the world whose condition has been created due to both political and legal factors and continues to be detrimental due to both political reluctance to solve the issue and a lack of appropriate legal and humanitarian protection.

But what does this all mean in terms of solving the issue? Where do we find a solution? Do we look for a single solution or do we search for solutions in all aspects of the problem that would require more time? Given the limited resources, should one focus on the humanitarian side of the issue by trying to eliminate the extreme poverty and dire living conditions rampant among these populations or focus on pressuring states to live up to their human rights obligations and provide protection for these groups? Should short term goals, such as providing immediate humanitarian assistance, or long term goals, such as pressuring states to adopt legislation that would provide safeguards against statelessness, be a priority? Should the focus be on reminding the international community of its responsibility towards protecting stateless individuals? Or maybe even lobbing for the adoption of more effective measures in dealing with statelessness on the international legal and political level?

I do not have the answers to all of these questions. However I do think that in order to deal with the problem effectively the focus should be placed on all factors rather than just one. Even though this might sound too optimistic, the complex nature of the issue of statelessness necessitates a more comprehensive approach that would deal with the various factors on the local, national and international level. Exploring some of these specific factors and possible solutions to statelessness would require a different blog post or a more elaborate study. Nevertheless, by working on the MENA region both through the fact sheets and the report on how the UPR procedure has death with the issue of gender discrimination and nationality I continue to discover and grow to understand the specific aspects of the issue of statelessness in the MENA.

Ivan Kochovski, Statelessness Programme intern

Statelessness in 2012: one step forward, two steps back?

The year 2011 ended on an unmistakable high in terms of momentum to address statelessness worldwide, with the issue somewhat stealing the show at UNHCR’s December Inter-ministerial meeting, as one state after another affirmed the importance of tackling the problem and pledged to take action. Entering the new year, things were still looking promising with a number of countries in Africa, Europe and the Americas already making good on their promises and acceding to one or other - or both - of the statelessness conventions, or taking steps to introduce a statelessness determination procedure in their legal system. 

Meanwhile, in early 2012, the newly elected Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, indicated his intention to continue his predecessor's work in highlighting problems of statelessness across the continent and expressed a particular interest in raising the issue of stateless children. Europe also saw the launch of the European Network on Statelessness at the start of June 2012: the first significant regional initiative by civil society to collaborate closely in order to 'strengthen the often unheard voice of stateless persons and to advocate for full respect of their human rights'. And Slovenia's "erased" have just won a landmark victory before the European Court of Human Rights' Grand Chamber, which ruled that the government's deletion of some 18,000 names from the civil registry books in 1992 - which left people both stateless and classed as illegal residents - was a violation of the right to family life (article 8 ECHR) and the principle of non-discrimination (article 14 ECHR). This case, Kuric v. Slovenia, provides crucial confirmation of the European court's competence to rule on matters relating to the enjoyment of nationality - given the right circumstances of the case - and its interest in acting on statelessness.

Each of the developments noted above - and more besides - constitutes an important step forwards in addressing statelessness and demonstrates that the issue is now, at last, receiving significant international attention. Yet, if we flip the coin over, the other side exposes some extremely disquieting statelessness-related developments. From Sudan/South Sudan, UAE, Syria, Dominican Republic, Libya and elsewhere comes news of emerging cases of statelessness and/or further stagnation or deterioration of the situation of stateless people. 

Most worrying of all - and distressing enough to take the shine off any global efforts towards the resolution of statelessness - is the news from Myanmar (Burma). For several weeks now, reports pouring out of the country have brought word of an ever-worsening situation for the stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar's Rakhine state, the Rohingya. What was initially described as a flare of ethnic tension has since deteriorated into shocking reports of killings, the destruction of tens of thousands of homes and the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Those attempting to flee the violence by sea are meeting perhaps even greater risks on their perilous journey, with reports of helicopters firing on boats full of these stateless refugees (including children). And those that do make it to shore in neighbouring Bangladesh being turned back out to sea in their overloaded boats with only a small supply of fresh of water and rice or bread as this news footage shows. 

While the recent moves towards a more democratic state have cast a positive light on the future of Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi's recent international tour - a highlight of which was her acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to her in 1991 - has inspired hope in many, the situation of the stateless Rohingya does not look set to benefit from these developments any time soon. Indeed, Suu Kyi herself has declared that she "does not know" if the Rohingya should be regarded as Burmese and now a group of eight ethnic parties allied with Myanmar's opposition movement has rejected the idea that the Rohingya should be recognised as one of the country's ethnic minorities. There is no doubt that the current treatment of the Rohingya both inside Myanmar and as hundreds seek protection abroad is casting a deep and worrying shadow on international developments in the field of statelessness in 2012. 

Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme