Click to expand Image Flag of Bahrain in Sakhir, March 2, 2023.  © 2023 Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP Photo (Beirut) – The Bahraini government on April 27, 2026, revoked the nationality of 69 citizens, including infants. All were Shia Muslims of Iranian heritage, the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) and Human Rights Watch said today. BIRD’s research found that at least 46 people, more than half of them children, were rendered stateless.   “Bahraini authorities have long discriminated against the country’s Shia majority population,” said Niku Jafarnia, Bahrain and Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But stripping people of nationality, claiming that they are citizens of a foreign country where most of them have no legal ties is an extreme escalation.”   BIRD and Human Rights Watch spoke to nine people affected and two relatives of others affected. Researchers also reviewed the Bahraini government’s related statements and decisions, as well as documents supporting the nationality of some of those affected.  Of those affected, 33 were children, including 10 toddlers, with the youngest only 19 days old, based on BIRD’s analysis, underscoring the arbitrary and collective nature of the measure. The majority of Bahrainis are Shia, who have long been oppressed by the Bahraini government.  The Ministry of Interior stated that the people stripped of citizenship are “of non-Bahraini origin.” While all are of Iranian descent, based on BIRD’s analysis—a background shared by up to 14 percent of Bahrain’s population—many of those interviewed said that their families had been in Bahrain for several generations and did not have Iranian nationality. Supporting documents reviewed showed that families had held Bahraini nationality for several generations, one of them for over a century.  One woman, whose husband and 9-month-old bab