Do I lose my rights as a British citizen when I travel to an other country for tourism?

Question

A friend of mine got detained at the airport in Jordan because his name matches a name of someone who has issues with the Jordanian authorities.

My friend is British and he only was passing through Jordan. They forced him to stay there for 24 hours with no food and he had to sleep on the floor before they determined that he is not the man they were after.

Does this incident mean that when you travel to a foreign country – even for a short time – that you give up your rights as a British citizen?

Answer 1

Your rights¹ in a country depend on that country's laws with respect to aliens (foreigners).

While you may expect some standards where countries have obligations under international law, a sovereign state is free to legislate with respect to aliens as it wishes.

The short answer? You don't have British rights when you travel abroad, and the same is true for any person who travels internationally. But each country may afford certain rights and privileges to foreigners, especially those who are in the country legally.

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_{1. Let's call them effective rights, because there's been a lot of (accurate) talk about you retaining your UK rights when you travel. Though this may be true, your experience overseas is going to really come down to the rights that the country that you are in recognises. Your responsibilities as a UK citizen, however, may continue even if not recognised by the country you are in by virtue of extraterritorial legislation.}

Answer 2

There are rights and duties that you have as a British Citizen. You keep these rights wherever you go. These rights say for example how British Police has to treat you, but if you are say in Germany, you are unlikely to meet British Police, so these rights are not very helpful abroad.

You have certain rights as a EU citizen. These rights will be useful to you mostly within the EU. Strange enough, some of these rights that you have as an EU citizen you (a British citizen) have everywhere in the EU, except in Britain! On the other hand, if you visit Germany, you might have EU rights that German citizens don't have.

Next, whatever country you go to, you may stay there long enough to become a resident, or short time to be a visitor. For example, if you visit the USA you have the right not to be robbed or shot. You don't have any right to enter the country (but they let you in because it's good for business), but once you're there you actually have quite a lot of rights, which the USA voluntarily give every person present in the USA. And that applies to people who are there illegally as well. Sure, the police can arrest them (like they arrest people believed to have committed a crime), or they can be removed, but they still have all the basic rights.

So as a visitor you have some rights, enough to say you are not "there at your own risk". As a resident you usually gain even more rights, but also more duties.

Answer 3

There are ways that you can give up your UK citizenship; travelling to a foreign country is not one of them.

While traveling you retain all your rights and obligations as a UK citizen - this includes the right to be detained and charged in accordance with the laws of the country through which you are travelling (unless you are an accredited diplomat). This is exactly the same right that you have at home!

While travelling one of your other rights is for the UK government to offer you consular support. Among the (long) list of things the government cannot do is:

Investigate crimes, get you out of prison, prevent the local authorities from deporting you after your prison sentence, or interfere in criminal or civil court proceedings; because we cannot interfere in another country’s processes, and must respect their systems just as we expect them to respect the UK’s laws and legal processes.

Answer 4

While the circumstances you describe do not mean your friend lost any of his British rights (which only apply to interactions with the British government), it is true that being outside of the UK a British subject does lose some protections.

For example, recently the UK assassinated three British subjects who were allegedly part of IS, on the grounds that they may have been plotting against the UK. If they had been in the UK at the time it is unlikely they would have been attacked with a drone; their rights under UK law would have required and arrest and prosecution. The government has stated that since they were outside the UK in what they claim was a "theatre of war", their killings did not require judicial oversight.

Well, not just oversight, we don't have capital punishment in the UK at all, and certainly not for the innocent.

Answer 5

You may have gotten rights and privileges mixed up. You don't have rights, as a British subject (you're subjects, right, not citizens?) in a foreign country. But it used to be that you had a privilege: That being a British subject would enable, even cause, the British government to use its influence - or even enforce its influence with military might - to protect you anywhere in the world. See Don Pacifico for example. And that might have made foreign countries think twice before messing with you.

But that was over 150 years ago. Today, your privilege: don't count on it.

Answer 6

When you travel to a foreign country, you're subject to that country's laws. You don't carry a bubble of immunity from laws that differ from those of your home country.

For instance, many countries still outlaw homosexuality. If a gay couple travels to one of these countries, and they're caught engaging in sodomy, they can be arrested and punished according to the country's laws, even though their activity would be legal at home.

There are also differences in the rights that are afforded to people in each country. For instance, there are countries that do not recognize broad freedom of speech. If you go to one of these countries, you can be arrested for speaking against their government, and the fact that you would be allowed to do so back home does not protect you.

Sometimes your government will try to intercede diplomatically on your behalf. For instance, when soccer star Brittney Griner was arrested in Russia on charges of drug smuggling because she had a tiny amount of medically-prescribed hash oil, the US State Department negotiated a prisoner exchange. But these are generally exceptions made for high-profile detainees or eggregious punishments -- you should not normally expect to be able to get around local laws, no matter how different they are from the laws you're used to.

Answer 7

If an EU citizen is detained by police for whatever reason, it must be given access to call its embassy or the embassy of any EU state.

Jordan doesn't have any right to detain EU citizens under any circumstances, except for vivid wrongdoings. I would advise your friend to get a lawyer and sue Jordan for mistreatment at the European Court of Human Rights and then seize its assets abroad if it doesn't want to pay!