TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - On Monday, September 22, 2014, Myanmar's military junta gave citizenship to 209 Muslims displaced by sectarian violence, after the first phase of a project aimed at determining the status of about a million Rohingya whose claims to nationality have been rejected in the past.
The Rohingya Muslim minority have lived under apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine State in western Myanmar. Many of them have no citizenship and many people in the predominantly Buddhist country refer to them as "Bengali", a term that implies they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although Bangladesh also rejected them as citizens of the country.
Officials from Myanmar's immigration ministry told Reuters that 1,094 Muslims took part in the pilot verification process in displacement camps in Myebon, which is about 51 km from the state capital, Sittwe.
Some of the 209 who received citizenship were members of the Kaman Muslim minority, who are recognized by the government as indigenous to Myanmar, but there were also Rohingya, although it is not mentioned how many Rohingya were included.
Aung Win, a Rohingya community leader in Sittwe, said that many had refused to take part in the verification process because they did not want to list their identity as Bengali, as required by the Myanmar authorities.
David Mathieson, a senior researcher on Myanmar with the Human Rights Watch, said that the government should take responsibility to defend the rights of the Rohingya. "This is active connivance in systemic abuse against a minority," he said.
REUTERS | RAJU FEBRIAN
