This post is part of our special coverage Myanmar's Rohingya.
Many in Myanmar believe that Rohingyas are Bengali Muslims who migrated to Western Myanmar (formerly Burma) after 1948. This is also the official stand of the Myanmar government which denies them citizenship according to their 1982 rule. This has opened a floodgate of discriminatory treatment against the Rohingya Muslims in the country, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to the neighboring countries including Bangladesh and Thailand.
The report of a fact finding mission by the Danish immigration service states:
Today 750,000 Rohingyas living for generations in Myanmar face considerable prejudice from Myanmar society. They are prevented from traveling freely outside of specially-designated zones in Myanmar. They are also not allowed to serve in state positions and are barred from attending higher educational institution. Getting a marriage contract can take up to one year.
In Myanmar, there are approximately 750,000 stateless Rohingya in Northern Rakhine State. Approximately 28,000 Burmese Rohingya are registered as living in two official refugee camps in Bangladesh, and more than 200,000 unregistered Rohingya live in surrounding towns and villages outside of the two camps. Malaysia hosts more than 90,000 refugees and asylum seekers, primarily in urban areas, 91% of whom are from Myanmar.
Abu Anin, a researcher, provides a history of the Arakan and the influence of Muslims in Myanmar:
In the partial census of 1954, the figures shown in the villages of Arakan were 56.75% Buddhist and 41.60% Muslims.
Nurul Islam of Rohingya Society in Malaysia writes:
‘Rohingya problem’ started in Burma from British colonial period onwards. There were violent anti-Indian (including anti-Muslim) riots in 1930-31 and again in 1938 in which several hundreds Indians and Muslims were killed in Burma. Muslim properties: shops, houses and mosques were looted, destroyed and burned under the campaign of ‘Burma for Burmese only’. Similar anti-Muslim sentiment blew up in Arakan too. [..] Bulk of the Muslims was internally displaced, and nearly 50,000 of them took refuge in the British held territories of Chittagong and Rangpur. [..]
The successive Burmese governments have had pursued policies of exclusion and persecution against Rohingyas while some hardhearted Rakhine academic and politicians are engaged in racist and xenophobic plans to marginalize and exterminate them. With preoccupation of ‘Muslim phobia’ the former dictator Ne Win promulgated an oppressive Burma Citizenship law in 1982 in order to deprive the Rohingyas of their time-honored citizenship and ethnic rights in Burma.
The Rohingya were citizens of Myanmar until the restrictive Citizenship Law of 1982 was promulgated by the late dictator Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) regime on October 15, 1982. This law essentially follows the principle of jus sanguinis (citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parent who are citizens of the nation.)
Nurul Islam continues:
Based on how one’s forebears obtained citizenship, Ne Win stratified citizenship into three status groups: full, associate and naturalized.
Full citizens are those belonging to one of the so-called 135 ‘national races’, who lived in Burma prior to 1823 — just prior to the conquest of parts of lower Burma (Arakan and Tenassarim) by the British, or were born to parents who were citizens at the time of birth. [..] Associate citizens are those who acquired citizenship through the 1948 Union Citizenship Law. Naturalized citizenship could only be granted to those who could furnish “conclusive evidence” of entry and residence before Burma’s independence on 4 January 1948, who could speak one of the national languages well and whose children were born in Burma. Thus naturalized citizens refer to persons who lived in Burma before independence and applied for citizenship after 1982.
It is worthy of mention that the previous parliamentary government listed 144 ethnic groups in Burma. But Ne Win put only 135 groups on a short list, and then was approved by his BSPP regime’s constitution of 1974. The three Muslim groups of Rohingya (Muslim Arakanese), Panthay (Chinese Muslims), Bashu (Malay Muslims) and six other ethnic groups were deleted. It was an injustice founded on religious rancour and racial prejudice towards Muslims and smaller non-Burman groups, particularly against the Rohingya, who are not a manageable minority.
1982 citizenship law violates several fundamental principles of international customary law standards, offends the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and leaves Rohingyas exposed to no legal protection of their rights.
Thirty-one leading NGOs in Myanmar said in a statement:
The Rohingyas are in permanent limbo. To counter Myanmar's claims that Rohingyas are Bangladeshis, the Bangladesh Government amended its Citizenship Order in 1982 to officially declare all Rohingyas as non-nationals. Bangladesh recently ordered three international charities to halt aid to Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh to stop the influx from Myanmar.
The 1982 citizenship law should be repealed, and replaced with a new law founded on basic principles of human rights. The new law should honour equality and non-discrimination, and help create an inclusive and tolerant Burma.
Bangladeshi blogger Kornofulir Majhi [bn] explains why Bangladesh cannot help the Rohingyas:
আমদের সরকার কিছু করতে পারবে না কারন বাংলাদেশের সরকারের ঘাড়ে এখন প্রায় ১৭ কোটি উর্ধ জনগনের ভার। যাদের মানবতার নিশ্চয়তা কোন সরকারই এখনো প্রতিষ্টা করতে পারেনি। [..] তাই যে দেশের কোনও সরকার আজো পর্যন্ত তাঁর নিজের জনগনের মানবতা রক্ষা করতে সামর্থ হয়নি সেই দেশের সরকারের কাছে আবার বাইর থেকে মানবতা ধার করে আনার কথা আশা করা মুর্খতা বই কিছু না।
Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that:
Everyone has the right to a nationality.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
However the Rohingya are deprived of these rights. They are stateless, not wanted by any country. The Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) published a statement late June calling for the segregation of Rohingya Muslims from ethnic Arakanese and urged the international community and UN to “set up a time frame to resettle to the Bengalis who are not Burmese citizens to a third country”.
Articles 20-23: Stateless persons to be treated no less favorably than nationals with respect to rationing, housing, public education, and public relief.
Article 31: Stateless persons not to be expelled except on grounds of national security or public order.
The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness stipulates that:
Article 1(1): Contracting States shall grant their nationality to persons, otherwise stateless, born in their territory
Article 1(3): A child born in wedlock in a Contracting State shall take the nationality of its mother.
Article 4: A Contracting State shall grant its nationality to a person, not born in its territory, if either parent had that State's nationality and the person would be otherwise stateless.
Amendments on citizenship laws are possible if the government has the will power. For example, the Bangladesh High Court conferred jus soli (right to soil) citizenship to all Urdu-speaking people born and residing in the Bangladeshi territory after 1971 on humane grounds.
Jack Healy at the Huffington post thinks tolerance and reconciliation are key to the solution:
Reconciliation is imperative, but real reconciliation is possible only when those who care for Burma's future make a commitment to tolerance and human rights protection. [..] Burma's national sovereignty and brightly diverse cultural and religious heritage are not under threat by 1.3% of the population living in some of the most abject poverty, but that heritage may be stained in the violence that is getting dangerously frenzied with the idea of ethnic cleansing.
This post is part of our special coverage Myanmar's Rohingya.