The UAE government has detained six activists who were stripped of their citizenship last year for insulting the country’s rulers.

The activists were summoned to the Interior Ministry in Abu Dhabi on Monday and asked to agree to find a new nationality within two weeks or be placed in a detention centre for illegal immigrants, Associated Press (AP) reported.

The UAE has deported non-citizens over the past year – including several Syrian expatriates for demonstrating outside their Dubai consulate – but revoking the nationality of citizens is an unusual penalty.

One of the activists told AP that the group are part of an Islamist organisation known as the Reform and Social Guidance Association, which has been campaigning for political reform.

Earlier this month, the UAE closed down the offices of two foreign pro-democracy groups – the US-funded National Democratic Institute of International Affairs (NDI) and Germany-based Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

The UAE has taken a cautious approach to democratic reform and increased the number of citizens eligible to vote in 2011’s National Council elections. In the 2006 election fewer than 7,000 people were entitled to vote, but the electorate was increased substantially for this year’s poll to 129,274 voters.

However, the elections held in November resulted in a turnout of only 20 per cent of the local population.