All Citizens are Created Equal, but Some are More Equal Than… 421 citizens.40 If nationality deprivation only applies to dual nationals, this is likely to lead to indirect discrimination against this group.41 The consequences of this are not benign, but part of a broader process that Choudhury describes as ‘the production of suspect communities’.42 In the run up to the 2017 elections in the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte (who succeeded in being re-elected), published an open letter in the country’s newspapers which is telling of the normalisation of rhetoric that treats being part of the ‘in-group’ as contingent on the right kind of behaviour.43 In a letter that is addressed to ‘all Dutch citizens’ and which goes on to refer to equal treatment as a shared value that needs to be upheld, he writes: We feel increasingly uncomfortable when people misuse our freedom to ruin things, when they came to our country precisely for that freedom. People who don’t want to adapt, diss our habits or reject our values […] I fully understand that people think: if you so fundamentally reject our country, I would rather you leave. I actually feel the same way. Act normally or get out.44 The instrumentalised use of citizenship stripping against dual nationals on the pretext of national security therefore should not be seen in a vacuum. Rather, it must be understood in a context in which some politicians ‘deliberately stoke and exploit the national security anxieties of national populations [with the result that] they effectively stigmatize entire racial, ethnic, national and religious groups’.45 This lends a real urgency to the scrutiny of such measures from the perspective of contemporary international law, which is what this article turns to next. 4 International Law Standards: Mixed Messages? Starting with the 1930 Hague Convention on certain questions relating to the conflict of nationality laws, international law has progressively developed to constrain states’ freedom to regulate acquisition and withdrawal of nationality. The affirmation of the right of every person to a nationality, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and later in many universal and regional treaties, has particularly influenced the shape of international norms.46 One specific rule that has emerged with a view to 40 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2018), Jaghai and van Waas (2019). UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2018), paras. 42–43. 42 Choudhury (2017), p. 227. 43 See also on the ‘Tolerated Citizen’, Anderson (2013). 44 In the original language, this extract read: ‘We voelen een groeiend ongemak wanneer mensen onze vrijheid misbruiken om hier de boel te verstieren, terwijl ze juist naar ons land zijn gekomen voor die vrijheid. Mensen die zich niet willen aanpassen, afgeven op onze gewoontes en onze waarden afwijzen. Aan alle Nederlanders […] Ik begrijp heel goed dat mensen denken: als je ons land zo fundamenteel afwijst, heb ik liever dat je weggaat. Dat gevoel heb ik namelijk ook. Doe normaal of ga weg’. See https​://www. vvd.nl/nieuw​s/lees-hier-de-brief​-van-mark/. 45 UN Human Rights Council (2018), p. 17. 46 Spiro (2011). 41 123