Wary of the past, Rohingya have frustrated the UN’s
attempts provide them documentation.
In 2016, Nural, as a leader in a Rohingya village in
Rathedaung, was called to a meeting by a high-ranking officer from the Myanmar
Border Guard Police. There, Nural and the gathered village leaders were told
all Rohingya must now accept identity cards, known as nationality verification
cards (NVCs), or they would “no longer be allowed to remain in the country” and
be “driven out”. Despite the risk of speaking out, Nural raised his voice in
the meeting, “These NVC cards make us into foreigners who are supposed to apply
for citizenship. We are already citizens of this country.” In his frustration
and anger, he pounded his fist on the table three times. Four armed officers
pointed their guns at his head, escorted him out of the room and handcuffed him
to a chair. Fortunately, he was not among the 30 men who were arrested in the
village that day. He was not the man who was shot dead while running away from
the guards that came searching for his father-in-law. He was not the man who
was sentenced to seven years in prison, or the one who was blinded in one eye
by police beatings. His village escaped being burnt that day – only to be razed
a year later.
“These cards make us into foreigners... We are already citizens of this country.”
Nural is only educated to primary level, but he knows
well the history of his people. He knows his Rohingya forefathers have resided
in the north Rakhine region centuries before the Burmese generals in power now,
who are Johnny-come-latelies by comparison. He knows that his parents and
grandparents carried the same citizenship cards and had the same rights as all
other citizens of independent Myanmar. And that Rohingyas’ proof of citizenship
and belonging has been systematically removed over the past thirty-five years
through the confiscation, destruction, nullification, and targeted non-issuance
of documents, all carried out by multiple civilian and military agencies under
a single command. He is sure that NVCs are just the latest in a long-line of ID
cards that attempt to recategorise Rohingya as foreigners, attack their group
identity and remove their rights.
In all Rohingya communities, village chairmen and yar ein
hmu (leaders of 100 households) like Nural were ordered to accept the cards.
They were told if they did not, they would be dismissed from their positions
and punished under the law. Some held out – others could not. Nural tells me
with pride that his was one of eight villages in Rathedaung that stood united
against the NVCs. He, himself, held out. He was just one of many Rohingya who
resisted the destruction of their identity as a group indigenous to the Rakhine
region by refusing the cards.
Now, after having fled across the border into Bangladesh,
Rohingya are facing a new chapter in their struggle against identity cards. But
this time threat is coming from an unexpected source – the United Nations refugee
agency – who has proposed a form of documentation which Rohingya claim is
almost identical to the cards imposed by the Myanmar state.
Nationality verification and genocide
Between 2016 and 2017, villages were subjected to
night-time “security” raids which villagers say were linked to the NVC cards.
One man described with tears of anger and sadness that his older brother died
after being bitten by a snake while hiding in the forest one night. As the men
hid, they left behind women
and girls who were repeatedly subjected to sexual violence at the
hands of the security forces. “I cannot even speak of what happened to our
women, while we hid.” He said. https://www.kaladanpress.org/images/document/2018/RapebyCommandWeb3.pdf
Across ten focus groups and multiple in-depth interviews,
I have been told that without the NVCs, school children were not allowed to sit
for final examinations, fishermen could no longer fish, cattle traders could no
longer go to market, businessmen could no longer pass through checkpoints,
parents could no longer register the births of their children, prisoners could
not be released at the end of their sentences, sick people could not go to the
hospital, and retirees could no longer draw their salaries. It became barely
possible to eke out a living, support a family or survive. The attempted
enforcement of identity cards was, and still is, aiding, what the Indian philosopher Amartya Sen
has described as, a “slow genocide” in Myanmar. But still
communities hold out. Rohingya accounts of the enforced issuance of NVCs are
full of heroism, tragedy, unity, pride and occasionally shame, where they could
no longer endure. https://youtu.be/ugHhAwARb98
The attempted enforcement of identity cards was, and still is, aiding the “slow genocide” in Myanmar.
In focus groups, I have often heard NVCs refered to as “genocide
cards” by Rohingyas. Following the outbreak of violence in August 2017, the
vast majority of Rohingya fled their homelands; many were killed or driven out
of the country by terror, their homes burned, and their lands stolen by the
state. A nationality verification process, originally (and sometimes still)
promoted by international agencies as “a pathway to citizenship” for
“stateless” Rohingya, has compounded the physical, symbolic and cultural
destruction of a group.
Unsurprisingly, the 800,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh’s
refugee camps are insistent that among their conditions of return to Myanmar is
the end of NVCs or NVC-like procedures.¹ They are demanding an end to being labeled
“Bengalis”, “foreigners” or “stateless.” They want their citizenship to be ecognized
and to be called by their own name, Rohingya, as an indigenous group of
Myanmar. It is not simply a matter of access to citizenship rights. It is also
a matter of safety, security and survival.
Resistance to UNHCR’s “smart cards” in
Bangladesh refugee camps
Displaced Rohingya are also uniting in their resistance
to another kind of ID card – the “smart cards” being issued by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Despite a deep and tangible
yearning to return home, they are resisting premature or forced repatriations
by refusing to accept UNHCR-issued biometric “smart cards”. These cards are
being issued following the memorandum of understanding between the UNHCR, the United
Nations Development Programme and the Myanmar government relating to
repatriations to Myanmar. Although the UNHCR and the Bangladesh government
claim the cards will not lead to immediate repatriation, Rohingya are
understandably wary. The UNHCR are in a predicament. Without issuing cards,
they struggle to “be operational.” But Rohingya are resolute in their rejection
– operations or not. https://progressivevoicemyanmar.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/382854287-The-MOU-between-Myanmar-Government-and-UNDP-and-UNHCR.pdf
On a visit to a refugee camp in Bangladesh to ask people
about citizenship in Myanmar, not smart cards, it soon becomes apparent that
the two are linked. The small crowd that gathers around me as I sit in a small
open-air shelter steadily grows as the conversation moves on to smart cards.
“Please do something about the smart cards, please”, one young refugee begs of
me.
Reports have been circulating for several months among
the camp population that there may be shadowy organisations offering 500
Bangladeshi Taka to each family willing to break ranks and take the cards, or
that beatings by security officers taking place outside the UNHCR office are
doled out for those that refuse. There’s buzzing concern and a subdued sense of
confusion and betrayal that a group of residents in another camp have
reportedly accepted UNHCR’s smart cards. In almost all of my conversations with
refugees over the past two months, the issue of “smart cards” has come up as a
major concern related to safety and security on return to their homelands in
Myanmar.
So, what’s wrong with the cards? Firstly, Rohingya are
asking that they be recognized on the cards as “refugees”, a term the
Bangladesh government is reluctant to entertain fearing it will contribute to
the protracted nature of the Rohingya refugee issue in Bangladesh. For
Rohingya, whose family and oral histories are ingrained with accounts of repatriations
at gunpoint over the past 40 years and the confiscation, destruction and
nullification of the documents that prove their citizenship on return, the term
“refugee” offers some degree of international protection. It also offers proof
that they crossed from their home in Myanmar. Myanmar has labelled past
returnees “Bengalis” and the UNHCR, who has presided over the monitoring of
returnees in the past, has been powerless to prevent further abuses.
Refugees are insisting that the UN refugee agency cards carry the term “Rohingya”.
Secondly, refugees are insisting that the UNHCR cards
carry the term “Rohingya”, running contrary to the agency’s practice of not
stating ethnic identities on ID cards, lest it result in discrimination.
Rohingya demands for recording their identity as a group indigenous to the
Rakhine region of Myanmar, relate not to international practices but to
practices within Myanmar in which the only variety of citizenship worth having
is one based on the membership of an ethnic group considered by the state to be
pre-colonial or indigenous – one recorded on all documents. Since these
refugees have been targeted for no other reason than their membership of a
group, Rohingya understand that the public acknowledgement of their ethnic
identity by the Myanmar state is absolutely essential in halting and preventing
the ultimate crime against a group, genocide.
Thirdly, and most significantly, Rohingya repeatedly
state that “the smart card is the same as the NVC card”. They have an important
point here – smart cards may well not be so different from NVCs in terms of
outcomes. All biometric and biographical information handed over to the UNHCR
will be shared with the Myanmar government in the event of repatriations, and
this can then be used, to produce the identification cards issued by the
Myanmar state. But much more importantly, as one bright young refugee explains,
jabbing aggressively with his finger at clause 15 of the leaked MOU between
UNHCR, UNDP and Myanmar on repatriations, the agreement states after Myanmar
has carried out the “necessary verifications” they will issue “appropriate
identification papers” and provide a “pathway to citizenship to those
eligible”. In short, the ID cards issued
on return, using the data from the UNHCR smart cards, will either be NVC cards
or something very similar, that require Rohingya to have their nationality
verified by a government that has systematically removed evidence of their
citizenship and evidence of Rohingya existence, as part of a 40-year genocidal
process. If returnees are lucky, or perhaps unlucky, they may be provided with
a citizenship document that labels and ecognized them as “Bengali” – but
certainly not “Rohingya”, not indigenous and not entitled to the same rights as
other citizens.
The poisoned chalice of “pathways to
citizenship”
What is even more problematic for Rohingya is that the
UNHCR along with other international agencies have since the 1990s promoted
“pathways to citizenship” as the way to resolve what they have historically
understood to be Rohingya’s de jure statelessness. The “temporary registration
cards” or “white cards” issued to Rohingya from 1995 onwards, during the
UNHCR’s time in the Rakhine state, gave material form to the international
rhetoric that Rohingya were “stateless”. One high profile camp-based Rohingya
activist claimed, “When UNHCR told us to accept these white cards in Myanmar,
they effectively labelled us as stateless.” Since they had citizenship before
the 1982 citizenship law, under the law, they should still be entitled to it.
Rohingya across five countries find the label “stateless” hurtful and harmful.
Rohingya across five countries, have consistently told me
how hurtful and harmful they find the label “stateless” as, for many; it
suggests that they have never been ecognized as citizens. “Pathways to
citizenship” is generally a way for international agencies to mediate between a
neglectful state and undocumented people. It is perhaps less appropriate in a
situation of genocide with the willful denial of the rights and the existence
an indigenous people.
“The good news”, I tell the young guy angrily prodding a
copy of the MOU, “is the UN Fact Finding Mission report is the first UN report
that does not call you de jure stateless, but de facto stateless. Just like any
other refugee in the world. They recommend the reinstatement of your full
citizenship.” His smile flickers, but he doesn’t appear reassured.
We can only but hope that the change in discourse brought
by the FFM report, which also describes the Rohingya persecution as “genocide”,
will help to finally bury the idea of NVC cards as part of a solution for
Rohingya. In the refugee camps, it is hard to miss the simmering anger and
indelible mistrust of the UNHCR for its inability to ensure voluntariness,
safety and rights during two previous rounds of forced repatriations in 1978-9
and 1993-4; and for its lack
of refugee consultation and transparency in negotiating the conditions
of potential Rohingya returns this year. Promoting smart cards for genocide
survivors, as though ID cards can provide a neutral record of external facts
about human beings, just isn’t going to wash this time. As one Rohingya
political leader told me, “it is impossible for the UNHCR to ensure
repatriations if they cannot even issue the smart cards on a voluntary basis.”
It’s time to stop talking about “pathways” – treacherous as they have been for
Rohingya – and to start listening to Rohingyas’ own understandings and
interpretations of how the genocide has played out, including how they feel
about the “genocide cards” and “smart cards”. Rohingyas know the significance
of these cards, more than anyone else, UN included. The survivor’s voice must
carry the greatest weight. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis-news/new-secretive-deal-between-un-myanmar-smells-foul-/1171661
*Names have been changed to protect
interviewees.
¹ See also the UN Special Rapporteur report
on Human Rights in Myanmar for conclusions regarding National Verification
Cards. http://undocs.org/A/73/332
² Some Rohingya media has reported the
beatings. http://www.rvisiontv.com/coxs-bazar-rohingya-refugees-abused-beaten-in-denial-for-accepting-smatcrads/
The author: Natalie Brinham is a PhD student
at Queen Mary University of London researching statelessness. She has worked
for many years in NGOs in the UK and Southeast Asia on forced migration,
trafficking and statelessness in both frontline service provision roles and
research and advocacy roles. She holds an MA from UCL Institute of Education
and a BA from SOAS.
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