A/HRC/35/41 59. The Special Rapporteur expressed concern at the situation of an ethnic minority in one East African country. In response to a spate of terrorist attacks, the Government launched an operation to increase the policing of ethnic minorities and Muslim communities.23 Over 6,000 police officers were deployed in one suburb, where the forces raided homes and arbitrarily arrested and detained close to 4,000 people, mostly of the country’s ethnic minority.24 There have also been cases of extrajudicial killings of terrorist suspects implicating the country’s antiterrorism unit and the police.25 B. Xenophobia and racism in immigration and border control policies 1. Freedom of movement 60. Aggressive counter-terrorism policies have disproportionally affected people from Arab countries, considerably restricting their freedom of movement. In one Western European country, hundreds of people have been subjected to administrative bans against leaving or entering the country since 2015.26 The Special Rapporteur is concerned that the authorities often justify those orders by using counter-terrorism rhetoric.27 61. Recently, in January 2017, an executive order was issued in one country, which suspended the Refugee Admissions Programme for 120 days, stopping it indefinitely for refugees from a particular country and banning entry into the country of nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries for national security concerns. 28 However, the courts ruled that there was little proof that the ban was in any way beneficial. Although the refugee programme remains frozen, an appellate court has upheld a stay on the travel ban. 29 2. Nationality 62. Several Western European countries have amended legislation to make it easier to strip citizens of their nationalities if they are suspected of terrorist-related activities.30 In more extreme cases, new amendments allow citizens to be stripped of their nationality while abroad or without prior judicial authorization. 31 63. In almost all countries with nationality-stripping measures, the Government ensures that the removal of citizenship does not have the effect of rendering an individual stateless.32 However, the Special Rapporteur has found that one country has legislated on the removal of citizenship for foreign-born nationals who only hold the citizenship of which they are being stripped.33 3. Treatment of refugees and asylum seekers 64. Responding to the fear of terrorism from an influx of refugees, many countries have enacted xenophobic measures to keep asylum seekers out. The Special Rapporteur documented examples of countries in Western Europe that are not acting fully in accordance with the international law principle of non-refoulement and are deporting 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Jeremy Lind, Patrick Mutahi and Marjoke Oosterom. Tangled Ties: Al-Shabaab and Political Volatility in Kenya. Evidence report No. 130, Addressing and Mitigating Violence (Institute of Development Studies, April 2015), p. 25. See www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/12/kenya-end-abusive-round-ups. See www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/wr2015_web.pdf. See Amnesty International, “Upturned lives: the disproportionate impact of France’s state of emergency” (2016). Available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur21/3364/2016/en. Ibid. See https://perma.cc/7245-GKMC; also https://perma.cc/L4HZ-RXAT. United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, State of Washington v. Trump, Per curiam order No. 17-35105, adopted on 7 February 2017. See Amnesty International, “Upturned lives” (2016). See https://perma.cc/5B72-2F9C; and http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/69460/. Ibid. Victoria Parsons, “Theresa May deprived 33 individuals of British citizenship in 2015” (Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 21 June 2016). 13