After the ethnic cleansing campaigns

Myanmar continues to delegitimize the Rohingya

The displacement of the Rohingya has led to a humanitarian crisis and the largest refugee population in the world.

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Over the past month, the International Court of Justice moved to dismiss initial objections by Myanmar authorities in the ongoing case over the 2017 genocide, which resulted in the mass deportation of the Rohingya Muslim community from their homes, and led to a humanitarian crisis and the largest refugee population in the world.

This news justifiably grabbed the headlines, but there was another dimension of the Burmese army's human-cleansing campaign against the Rohingya that received insufficient attention, namely the malicious use of identity documents as a deliberate state tactic.

To understand this point, it is important to briefly refer to the history of the relationship between the Rohingya and the state apparatus in post-independence Burma, now known as Myanmar.

The 1950s and 1960s saw a certain level of civilian representation for the Rohingya in the country.

They were issued identity registration cards as citizens of Burma, as well as passports for those who wanted to travel.

But in the 1970s, the Rohingya living in Rakhine state were subjected to a series of army attacks on their state, which led to the first wave of refugee flight in the region.

In 1982 the citizenship law for the Rohingya was struck down as a recognized ethnicity, becoming a displaced people overnight.

At this point, the Rohingya found their previous identity cards canceled and the government started issuing them a "white paper", which represents a kind of temporary situation that requires verification of the nature of their citizenship.

These white papers were a deliberate policy to bring their residence status into a state of complete wandering.

In 2015, these white papers were also canceled, and the government took them back from the Rohingya population, and the Rohingya were required to do some procedures such as applying for new national verification cards, and obtaining these cards was not only difficult, but required documented evidence from three generations of this The ratios tie the cardholder to the region he lives in, but the card is less so than the previously issued white cards.

The new national identification cards require that the Rohingya are classified as "Bengalis" and thus renounce their collective ethnic identity and participate in the propaganda narrative that they are the descendants of the Bengali laborers brought to Burma during British colonial rule.

The card itself was a confirmation of their status as aliens applying for citizenship, and not as people whose nationality needed to be verified, as was the case in the past.

As expected, when the new national verification cards were first issued, they were rejected by the Rohingya, as they clearly represented a form of ethnic delegitimization that has been the hallmark of Burmese state policy over the past decades.

Since 2017, the remaining part of the Rohingya in the country have been forced to adopt this new system of national identification cards under the prevailing repressive conditions, or else they will face constant threats, detention or denial of access to health care and education.

The use of these ID cards is intended as a means to slowly and subtly destroy the Rohingya, complementing what the Myanmar regime is doing through the use of military force.

Although the Myanmar regime uses the tactic of issuing this identity to deflect international condemnation of the horrors taking place against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, the truth is that it is an aspect of the conflict that should be highlighted more given the sad reality of this genocide that is taking place before our very eyes. The international community in the 21st century.

Saqib Sheikh, Refugee Project Advisor in Malaysia

New national identification cards require that the Rohingya are classified as "Bengalis" and thus renounce their collective ethnic identity and participate in the propaganda narrative that they are the descendants of Bengali laborers brought to Burma during British colonial rule. 

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