Myanmar Citizenship Research Articles

Humanitarian Activism, Social Protection, and Emergent Citizenship in Myanmar

Through the confluent impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2021 military coup, Myanmar has become a failed state. Deliberate targeting of humanitarian actors by the military junta has severely constrained the activities of international non-governmental organisations and United Nations agencies. In the first three post-coup years, welfare provision to the distressed and displaced were mainly undertaken by local actors who adapted to new conditions of both insecurity and broader economic turmoil. This localised welfare is intertwined with emergent local governance mechanisms, using technology and data analysis to deliver transparent, accountable, and inclusive public service. In the absence of a coherent central state, the social contract of welfare develops at more local levels, generating smaller islands of citizenship from which to build future political communities.

Legal Protection of Rohingya Citizens Related to The Conflict in Myanmar

There are many crimes against humanity cases that occurred in the world. One of them is happened in Myanmar, which is Rohingya ethnic conflict. Rohingya ethnic conflict is an issue based on discrimination to Rohingya ethnic because there are some differences at ethnic and religion. Ethnic Rohingya is not recognized by Myanmar and not granted a status of citizenship Based on Myanmar Citizenship Law (Burma Citizenship Law 1982). This research was conducted to find out how the legal forms to Rohingya citizens based on international law. This methodology is a normative legal research that uses statutes, case, fact approaches. The research found that the role of UNHCR in handling Rohingya cases has been mandated by the United Nations and in accordance with UNHCR Statute. UNHCR plays an important role in addressing the issue of Rohingya case, at leas as initiator, facilitator, conciliator, and determination. Such roles were taken to resolve the conflict that face by Rohingya ethnic, like provide protection, safety, and facilitate every Rohingyas refugees needs. In addition to the role of UNHCR, some countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and Canada also provided some arrangement in addressing the issue of Rohingya.

Citizenship denied, deferred and assumed: a legal history of racialized citizenship in Myanmar

ABSTRACT Since the late colonial period, Myanmar has experienced heated debates over notions of belonging, including belonging as inscribed through citizenship status. At independence, Myanmar opted for a hybrid citizenship regime that allowed for paths to citizenship based on both jus sanguinis and jus soli principles, as well as a liberal naturalization policy. However, a new citizenship law passed in 1982 created a tiered system with differential eligibility, rights, and application procedures for jus sanguinis and jus soli pathways, highly restricting the jus soli path to citizenship while privileging state-recognized ethnic groups by strengthening jus sanguinis pathways. The article traces the historical evolution of Myanmar’s postcolonial citizenship regime and how notions of belonging, foreignness, and nativity engendered one of the world’s most racialized citizenship regimes. A close examination of the citizenship regime highlights how citizenship and belonging for Myanmar’s ‘unofficial minorities’ are both contingent and ‘in process’, often a status left pending rather than denied or secured. This creates a ‘deferred citizenship’ which impacts not only individual applicants and their descendants but perpetuates Myanmar’s exclusionary and tiered citizenship system, ensuring that the ‘citizenship question’ is passed to the next generation.

Exploring the Root Causes of the Persecution Policy Against Rohingya People: A Study based on Three Constitutions of Burma/Myanmar

This article presents and analyzes the complex case of the Rohingya, a large group that allegedly migrated from the Bengal area and has been deprived of citizenship through the sociopolitical measures of the Myanmar government, thereby making them de facto stateless people in Myanmar. Through archival research investigating extensive historical records in Myanmar with a particular focus on the three constitutions of the country, this study attempted to identify and analyse the sociopolitical reasons and underlying sociocultural rationale for why Rohingya migrants are deprived of citizenship in Myanmar, treated as illegal immigrants, and subjected to criminal prosecution and oppression under Myanmar’s military rule. While violence against the Rohingya people should be condemned, the Buddhist nationalism of the majority of Myanmar citizens and the concern about territorial sovereignty of the Myanmar government must be well understood before effective tutelary measures can be contemplated for the Rohingya people.

Understanding the rohingya crisis :

The current crisis in Myanmar concerning the Rohingya people has resulted in a huge number of stateless refugees. An answer to the citizenship of these refugees is urgently required. This study summarizes the comparative analysis of the existing citizenship framework of Myanmar with the older version. After briefly reviewing earlier legal framework Citizenship Law of the Union 1948 concomitant to the 1947 Constitution of Burma, the study analyzes the changes made in Citizenship Law of Burma 1982 concomitant to the 1974 Constitution. Major results from the empirical studies conducted earlier suggest that there exist three types of citizenship in Myanmar while this study has found that there are four types of citizenship prevails in Myanmar. The study also has come out with the finding that there exists very little scope for Myanmar government to legalize a large number of Rohingya populations unless the Law is revised first. Therefore, the government should focus on the revision of the law if it really wants to prove its good intention for a sustainable solution.

Rohingya Refugee Repatriation from Bangladesh: A Far Cry from Reality

State-backed systematic persecution in 2017 forcibly displaced more than 700,000 Rohingya people from Rakhine State, Myanmar, to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar have become a matter of worry for the Bangladesh government. The conditions in the camps are appalling, raising the possibility of an epidemic, and there has been a spike in crime, including rape, murder, abduction and drug and human trafficking. Seeking a better future, some Rohingya refugees have attempted to move from Bangladesh to Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia through various illegal routes. But these attempts have either failed or the refugees faced an even worse situation, since these Southeast Asian states refused to confer refugee status on the Rohingyas. Therefore, to bring normalcy back to the lives of the Rohingya people, a repatriation process from Bangladesh to Rakhine State, Myanmar, must be created and implemented. This would require the Government of Myanmar to guarantee a conducive living environment for the Rohingyas in the Rakhine State, uphold their basic human rights and provide Myanmar citizenship to the Rohingyas. As regional powers with major economic and political interests in Myanmar, India and China could play a constructive role and bring pressure on the Myanmar government to agree to take back the Rohingyas from Bangladesh. But so far, both New Delhi and Beijing have been reluctant to get involved in resolving the Rohingya refugee issue.

History of Rakhine State and the Origin of Rohingya Muslims

Myanmar is a resource-rich country especially in oil and gas. The country is involved in ethnic conflicts since its independence in 1948. Recently violation of human rights against the Rohingya Muslims become severs. The main cause of Rohingya crisis is a question about its origin. Rakhine (or Arakan) is a State located in the west coast of Myanmar. The population of Arakan State is largely agrarian and more than 43.5% live below the poverty line. The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group in Rakhine, consider as the most persecuted, vulnerable, and oppressed minorities around the globe. Recently, the persecution on Rohingya Muslims has increased due to Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar. Rohingyas are continued to suffer from several forms of restrictions and human rights violations in Myanmar due to deny Myanmar citizenship. They are victim of various oppressions, such as, arbitrary taxation, land confiscation, destruction of mosques, torture and ill-treatment, extrajudicial executions, restrictions on movements, forced eviction and house destruction, forced laborers on roads and at military camps, and financial restrictions on marriage. Oppression on Rohingya started since 1962, when General Ne Win took power of Myanmar after a coup. Since the 1970s, a number of crackdowns on the Rohingya in Rakhine have forced hundreds of thousands to flee to neighboring countries. Sever Rohingya oppression took place in 2017 and 2018. More than one million Rohingya have migrated in Kutupalong-Balukhali, and Nayapara refugee camps, respectively, in Ukhia, and Teknaaf of Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh. This article deals with the origin of Rohingyas and their citizenship in the Rakhine State of Myanmar.

Myanmar's Citizenship Law as State Crime: A Case for the International Criminal Court

This article argues that Myanmar's authorities subject the Rohingya to human rights violations that can be accurately described as the crime of apartheid. Myanmar's discriminatory application of its citizenship laws and processes is central to this crime, yet while Myanmar is not a signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the court's jurisdiction remains limited. However, Myanmar's government has brought this crime to the territory of International Criminal Court (ICC) member state Bangladesh. Because Myanmar's government insists upon Rohingya participation in discriminatory citizenship processes as a precondition of refugee repatriation to Myanmar, this presents the ICC with an opportunity to assert its jurisdiction. While current ICC investigation focusses mostly on alleged crimes committed by the Myanmar military, crimes associated with Myanmar's citizenship processes would likely be the responsibility of Myanmar's civilian government, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, making Myanmar's civilian political leaders liable for the first time to ICC prosecution.

Three Faces of the Rohingya Crisis: Religious Nationalism, Asian Islamophobia, and Delegitimizing Citizenship

Myanmar is a non-secular Buddhist majority country born out of the ashes of the murder of their leader of independence struggle, General Aung San, was assassinated on July 19, 1947, a few months before the independence of Burma on January 4, 1948. His failed legacy in integrating Myanmar into a multicultural nation which contains of Burmans as ethnic majority and non-Burman minorities continues to obsess Myanmar’s people. The Rohingya crisis is not a religious conflict between Islam and Buddhism because both of them have a long-shared history of peaceful coexistence. Furthermore, it is also not only a case of Buddhist persecution against Muslims as recognized by the Rohingyan nationalists. Actually, it is a clash between two views of nationalism over the claim to Myanmar citizenship. The conflict invokes Buddhist and Muslim nationalist in order to protect and preserve national ethnicities as religious identities in turn causing the rise of the new phenomena of Asian Islamophobia.

History of Rakhine State and the Origin of the Rohingya Muslims

The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group in Rakhine, are considered among the most persecuted, vulnerable, and oppressed minorities in the world. Recently, the persecution on the Rohingya Muslims has increased due to Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar. The Rohingya continue to suffer from several forms of restrictions and human rights violations in Myanmar due to them being denied Myanmar citizenship. They are victims of various forms of oppression, such as arbitrary taxation, land confiscation, destruction of mosques, torture and ill-treatment, extrajudicial executions, restrictions on movements, forced eviction and house destruction, forced laborers on roads and at military camps, and financial restrictions on marriage. Since the 1970s, a number of crackdowns on the Rohingya in Rakhine have forced them to flee to neighboring countries. More than one million Rohingyas have migrated to refugee camps in the Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar. This article deals with the origin of the Rohingya, the form of their citizenship, and recent oppression in the Rakhine State of Myanmar.

Adulteration of pure native blood by aliens? mixed race kapya in colonial and post-Colonial Myanmar

ABSTRACTColonization may be viewed not only as loss of sovereignty and territory but also of ‘purity’ of a native race to an alien power. After the British colonized Burma in the late nineteenth century, they brought in Chinese and Indians to the sparsely populated colony as labour for new administrative and economic activities. Intermarriage, mainly between native Burmese women and men of alien races – British, European, Chinese and Indian – was thus inevitable. Mixed-race peoples – kapya in Burmese – were then born out of these relationships, and their identities became a key political issue in colonial Burma. Importantly, all natives, foreigners, and kapya were British subjects at that time. Independent Burma from 1948 through 1962 was not expressly anti-foreigner/kapya; working to naturalize those who had overstayed or remained. However, the Ne Win government from 1962 through 1988 was openly against ex-foreigner and kapya citizens, passing a new citizenship act in 1982 to downgrade their citizenship to a second class tier. The Myanmar Citizenship Law (1982), which remains in force, has downgraded the legal, political and social stature of ex-foreigner and kapya citizens. A more problematic and racist term thway-nhaw or ‘adulterated’ race has come to the fore, being used in official law-like language in recent years and highlighting the racist roots of the Myanmar Citizenship Law.

The Rohingya of Myanmar: theoretical significance of the minority status

ABSTRACTThe Rohingya of Myanmar have been experiencing a range of human rights violations including state-sponsored genocide and ethnic cleansing. Many argue that the genesis of the crisis lies in the denial of their legal status and granting citizenship would offer a solution. This article argues that apart from such legal dynamics, significant theoretical aspects of this crisis require analysis. From a theoretical perspective, the Rohingya’s identity as a minority is important as it leads to their persecution. This article demonstrates that their minority identity has been (re)constructed over time. Four factors such as (i) development of Burmese nationalism; (ii) politicisation of identity for Burmese majority; (iii) taking away of the citizenship of Rohingya; and (iv) ethnic divisions in Myanmar society have played significant roles in (re)constructing their identity as a minority. They give rise to a type of citizenship in Myanmar, which fails to include the religious minority within its ambit.

The Dark Side of Liberalization: How Myanmar's Political and Media Freedoms Are Being Used to Limit Muslim Rights

ABSTRACTThis article describes how divisive groups have taken advantage of Myanmar's new political and media freedoms to pursue an agenda that will limit the civil and political rights of the country's Muslim population. The article argues that enforcement of the four Protection of Race and Religion Laws will disadvantage Myanmar's already politically marginalized Muslim residents by creating a de facto religious test for full Myanmar citizenship rights. The article examines both the positive and negative aspects of Myanmar's liberalizations, the nature of the ‘Protection of Race and Religion' legislative package and how this will interact with Myanmar's citizenship laws.

Comparing Models of Non-state Ethnic Education in Myanmar: The Mon and Karen National Education Regimes

This article explores two models of non-state education provision in Myanmar (Burma), in order to draw conclusions regarding templates for ethnic education regimes in this fast-changing country. Ethnic Armed Groups in Myanmar have developed education systems in the context of long-running armed conflicts. This paper examines two such regimes. Karen communities struggle with few resources to educate their children. Despite great difficulties, the Karen National Union has developed a curriculum based upon one Karen dialect, which is employed in about 1,000 schools. Graduates of this education regime are mostly unable to speak fluent Burmese, or to integrate with the Myanmar tertiary education system; they are orientated towards a Karen national identity, rather than Myanmar citizenship. However, with the beginnings of a substantial peace process, Karen educators will need to re-think their implicitly separatist agenda. A comparative case study is offered by the Mon ethnic minority. The New Mon State Party has had a fragile ceasefire since 1995. Some 270 Mon National Schools provide Mon language instruction at elementary levels, shifting to Burmese at middle school. As the Mon Schools follow the government curriculum, with extra classes in Mon language and history-culture, graduates are able to matriculate and enter the nationwide tertiary education system. We argue that the Mon experience can be a useful model for education reform in a transitional Myanmar, as political and civil society leaders negotiate a more decentralised state.

Myanmar: The 2011 Elections and Political Participation

The concept of citizenship is directly linked to the changing nature of the nation-state (Joppke 2007; Kivisto and Faist 2007; Mitra 2011). While there is a debate if citizenship can exist under a military dictatorship, the shift from Myanmar’s military junta to a parliamentary system heavily dominated by the military poses new questions about the concept of citizenship in that country. The research aims to be a first step in exploring the concept of citizenship in Myanmar, i.e., an individual’s relationship with the state and his/her understanding of rights, responsibilities, and in particular, political participation in light of the re-creation of a multi-party system and the 2010 elections. The article proposes to discuss young Myanmar’s’ self-articulation of their relationship with the state, focusing in particular on the perceptions held by those in their early to late twenties, all of whom were first-time voters. The research uses a mixed-methods approach. In the year preceding the elections, a questionnaire with qualitative and quantitative sections was distributed at a private higher education institution in Yangon (in English), where 54 questionnaires out of 55 were returned, and in villages in the Delta (in Burmese), where 49 out of 55 were returned. A second set of data was collected in Yangon in February 2011 after the elections and the first sitting of the parliaments but before the handover of power from the SPDC to the new government on the March 30, 2011. The data consisted of focus groups with young people of Bamar and ethnic minority origin. Three in-depth interviews with civil society leaders were also conducted to illustrate some of the salient issues. The article concludes that the concept of citizenship in Myanmar is very thin and often pertains to passports and identity cards. The elections have allowed for some form of political participation, which was readily embraced by the younger generation. There seems to be a range of views held by the youth who took part in the focus groups. While there was at the time apprehension about how much change there would be, many agreed that the structural change and the embryonic political processes are a necessary and positive step in the right direction. While the discussion started an initial debate about rights and duties, the act of voting and taking part in wider political processes were not linked to the concept of citizenship, indicating how much more work needs to be done to increase the political literacy of the youth in Myanmar as the country moves forward.

Authentications of Myanmar National Registration Card

The automatic identification system of Myanmar national registration card (NRC) holder is presented in this paper. The proposed system can be handled the identification by the extracted low quality face image and fingerprint image from Myanmar NRC. Both of the facial recognition and fingerprint recognition system are developed for Myanmar citizenship confirmation. Age invariant face recognition algorithm is performed based on combination of DiaPCA (Diagonal principal Component Analysis) and KNN (K th nearest neighbor classifier) approaches. An algorithm of the fingerprint recognition is proposed for recognition of the poor quality fingerprint image with fabric background. Several experiments have been done for confirming the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Investigation on an outbreak of measles caused by new virus (d11 genotype) imported from Myanmar

To study the relevant factors on an measles outbreak caused by imported new virus (d11 genotype) from Myanmar and to develop effective strategies and measures. On-site investigation on the outbreak was carried out. There were four townships (66%) in Menglian county reported 15 cases of measles, with 7 cases aged 6 months to 5 years old, 2 cases with the history of measles vaccination (MV). Another 8 cases were 21 to 49 year-olds but their histories on immunization were unclear. 14 of the measles cases with Myanmar citizenship came to China for treatment. They were aged 10 months to 13 years old, with only one case had ever received MV vaccination. For all the 29 cases, except for one case who did not adopt the sample case of Myanmar, the remaining 28 patients were positive for measles IgM antibodies. 6 cases of measles virus RNA were detected in the amplified sequence which showed genotype d11, and was considered Myanmar imported wild virus. 184 people received the MV inoculation, with a rate of 61.96% and the serum samples showed a measles IgG antibody positive rate of 87.50%. Manner MV emergency vaccination was carried out timely in that county so the measles outbreak was effectively controlled. Imported measles cases from foreign countries might lead to epidemic, indicating the difficulty and challenge in the elimination of measles in our province. Emergent vaccination of MV could interrupt the transmission of the disease. Our experience showed that MV was effective in the prevention of d11 genotypes measles infection in the area.