The government refuses to grant the Rohingya citizenship, and as a result, most of the group’s members have no legal documentation, effectively making them stateless. Myanmar’s 1948 citizenship law was already exclusionary, and the military junta, which seized power in 1962, introduced another law twenty years later that stripped the Rohingya of access to full citizenship. Until recently, the Rohingya had been able to register as temporary residents with identification cards, known as white cards, which the junta began issuing to many Muslims, both Rohingya and non-Rohingya, in the 1990s. The white cards conferred limited rights but were not recognized as proof of citizenship.
In 2014 the government held a UN-backed national census, its first in thirty years. The Muslim minority group was initially permitted to identify as Rohingya, but after Buddhist nationalists threatened to boycott the census, the government decided Rohingya could only register if they identified as Bengali instead.
Similarly, under pressure from Buddhist nationalists protesting the Rohingya’s right to vote in a 2015 constitutional referendum, President Thein Sein canceled the temporary identity cards in February 2015, effectively revoking their newly gained right to vote. (White card holders were allowed to vote in Myanmar’s 2008 constitutional referendum and 2010 general elections.) In the 2015 elections, which were widely hailed by international monitors as free and fair, no parliamentary candidate was of the Muslim faith.
In recent years, the government has forced Rohingya to start carrying national verification cards that effectively identify them as foreigners and do not grant them citizenship, according to a report by the advocacy group Fortify Rights. Myanmar officials have said the cards are an initial step toward citizenship, but critics argue that they deny Rohingya their identity and could make it easier for the government to further repress their rights.
Interesting!