Shamima Begum

[Mamabear04]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2n8xv61x3o

I'll admit I actually don't know much about this apart from it being on the news when it happened and I did watch a documentary about it. Do you think she should be allowed to have British citizenship? I mean she was a child when it happened, surely she was groomed? And now stateless, doomed to live indefinitely in a camp with nowhere to go? I think running away to join Isis is of course absolutely awful but surely she should be treated as a child that was groomed? Or am I missing something?

So she held Bangladeshi citizenship but that stopped at 21 because she didn’t confirm it, even though she had been stripped of UK citizenship before she turned 21? Interesting decision. I wonder who was advising her.

Kind of missed the point there though. We should not be dumping this problem on Bangladesh.
My DH is a dual citizen (not Bangladesh) and has visited the other country many times, but it would be totally ridiculous if he committed a crime and the UK government suddenly decided that despite being born, raised and educated in the UK they would deprive him of his UK citizenship and leave the other place to deal with him.

The answer to not wanting your citizenship stripped as a duel citizen is not to commit crimes 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think if he committed a crime in either his other country of citizenship or in a third jurisdiction, his UK citizenship might count for very little. Australia will wash its hands of you in the parallel situation - dual nationality cuts no ice with them.

That's very easy to say but dual citizenship means we are full citizens. It's not like we are half citizens with only half the rights in each country.

(Also, Shemima Begum doesn't have dual citizenship. In fact right now she has no citizenship).

If it’s a term of keeping keeping citizenship when you are a duel citizen that’s exactly what it is. There’s plus sides and clearly downsides of duel citizenship like Americans if earning too much paying multiple tax. Downside commit a crime and be deported and loose citizenship. That’s the deal.

she was automatically entitled and a citizen of another country till she was 20/21 or something. Then she would have to apply as an adult. We removed it for her being a terrorist while she still had another.

I think people are missing my original point, which is not about whether it's fair on Ms Begum to remove her UK citizenship, but whether it's fair on Bangladesh to attempt to force them to accept her, which is effectively what the UK government is doing, if you accept their argument that removing UK citizenship won't leave her stateless.
This is not Bangladesh's problem, and I'm embarrassed by my government trying to make it so.

She had a citizenship under Bangladesh’s rules, not the UK’s. The UK can’t be held responsible for another country’s citizenship laws. They could have different laws if they liked. How is it not fair if they have to keep their own laws?

If Bangladesh had revoked her right to citizenship first what do people feel should have been done then?

@GlitterGirlZone oh really? So you think girls groomed at 13 by older men for sexual purposes, the girls are at fault too? Not the men.

Nobody chooses to be sexually exploited, they're victims of a crime.

Seeking out extreme content and having awful thoughts is a bad thing that can harm others. Our compassion can stretch to understand this. Most people's compassion does not go as far as planning a trip to Syria, partaking it happily, and still when your little society crumbles, defending it (literally, that interview was the best acting she could pull off so you can only imagine what she really thought).

They have both been convicted and since released so they were forgiven.
They actually murdered someone and weren't groomed.
She should be brought back and tried if we actually want justice.

I do feel sorry for her. But I don't think she should be allowed back into the UK.

She made her choice. What she did was not a childish rebellion, it was very extreme. She isn’t stateless she could go to Bangladesh.

She may not have shown remorse, but would you? If you were living in a camp surrounded by dangerous and desperate people who still believe in the cause, she can't very well say she was wrong to join them and the cause is evil.

No she can't go to Bangladesh. Why do you think that?

If you can't see how distasteful it is to use the law to make your own problem into someone else's problem, when they were not involved in creating the problem, and couldn't have prevented it, then really nothing else I say is going to enlighten you.

As it is, this wrangling by the UK government has made it so-far impossible for Begum to be put on trial for her alleged crimes, and since Bangladesh understandably won't make any effort to take her, she'll stay in the camp in Syria indefinitely and possibly never stand trial, to be either absolved or convicted. I don't see that as a positive thing.

Anyway I've made my point for the last time now. I'm not standing for office so it's of no real consequence if people agree or not.

She is stateless. She lost her Bangladeshi citizenship on her 21st birthday. Bangladesh has made it clear that she would not be allowed to enter the country.

You can still be a straight A student and be deeply unhappy with no hope for the future. Being academic doesn't stop you from having mental health problems.

Womp , womp! Are you a child? Grow up.

We know that she was groomed because two people were charged at the time. Not just for grooming her, but others as well. She came under the trafficking conditions enough that she should have been viewed as a child trafficked for sexual exploitation.
At the time we said that she couldn't come back, her last child was alive. We let 300 Isis fighters back in. She was the poster person for the wonderful Tory reaction to Isis and what a good job they were doing. We have very violent men who don't even hold British citizenship in British prisons and they aren't living under a threat of deportation. We let men in constantly who go straight onto watch lists. Every bomber and the likes of the London bridge stabber were known to authorities. She's had the decisions made about her because they are popular to some of the public.

Just to add has anyone read what her ex husband has said previously (he has now changed his tune a bit)? He admits to beating and raping her daily to teach her how to be a good jihadi wife, she was 15. Throw in three pregnancies in camps, births and the death of her babies, were was the time to be the dangerous individual that she's made out to be? It was also a massive failure by the police that those girls were able to fly out of the UK.

"I reckon if she had made a clear apology from the start and completely renounced ISIS and everything they stand for then she would have got a more favourable outcome."

While living in a camp full of ISIS sympathisers? That would have been an extremely dangerous thing for her to do. No idea whether she would even want to, but she isn't exactly free to speak up if she does.

It was because Bangladesh said if she ever turned up there, they would execute her. I wouldn't have exercised my right to apply for citizenship under those circumstances either.

I'd like to know if she was involved in keeping women and children as slaves, if she really did sew people into suicide vests, if she was part of the morality patrols that beat women or earmarked them for death for showing their face, hair or an inch of flesh. Did she have any involvement with the prisoners who were tortured and killed? Let her be put on trial abroad like other ISIS/ISIL brides or like Jihadi Jack. She's lucky she's amongst sympathetic people in a camp and not in a prison.