Myanmar forces Rohingyas to accept cards that preclude citizenship

Myanmar authorities are forcing members of the Rohingya Muslim minority at gunpoint to accept identity cards that categorise them as foreigners, stripping them of the chance to become citizens, a rights group said on Tuesday.

Myanmar has drawn global condemnation for its treatment of the Rohingya and the report by the group Fortify Rights on the campaign to make them accept National Verification Cards is likely to compound concerns about their treatment.

‘The Myanmar government is trying to destroy the Rohingya people through an administrative process that effectively strips them of basic rights,’ said Matthew Smith, the group’s chief executive officer.

The government has coerced Rohingya to accept the NVCs, ‘which effectively identify Rohingya as ‘foreigners’,’ the group said.

‘Myanmar authorities tortured Rohingya and imposed restrictions on Rohingya freedom of movement in the context of implementing the NVC process,’ it said.

The government of predominantly Buddhist Myanmar has denied citizenship to most Rohingya, who are generally seen as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, even though many trace their roots in Rakhine State in western Myanmar back for generations.

Rakhine State drew global attention after about 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in 2017, following a military crackdown in response to militant attacks.

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay was not immediately available for comment.

Military spokesman Major General Tun Tun Nyi dismissed accusations that anyone was being forced to accept the cards at gunpoint or through torture.

‘It is not true and so I have nothing else to say,’ he said by telephone.

The issue could have implications for prospects for the repatriation of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Many say they will not go back unless their security can be guaranteed and they can be sure of being granted citizenship.

Meanwhile, civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has washed her hands of the Rohingya crisis, a UN rights investigator said Tuesday ahead of a meeting between South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in and the tarnished democracy icon.

Yanghee Lee, a university professor in Seoul who is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights to Myanmar, said Suu Kyi was ‘terribly misguided and misinformed’ about the abuses against the stateless Muslim minority in her country.

The Nobel laureate was under house arrest for years when Myanmar was a military dictatorship before her party won elections in 2015 by a landslide, in the first fully free vote for generations.

The US in July banned Myanmar’s army chief Min Aung Hlaing and other officers for their role in the campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Suu Kyi was spared from the sanctions but no longer deserved to be called a democracy activist, Lee said.

‘She should step up and really speak out for the treatment that the Rohingya had suffered for decades,’ she said.

‘It’s time for her to speak out and use the word, call them the way they identify themselves as the Rohingya.’

Myanmar is holding insurgent suspects incommunicado in a practice that may be covering up torture, UN human rights experts said on Tuesday, reports Reuters.

The three UN experts, Yanghee Lee, Agnes Callamard and Nils Melzer, said they had grave concerns about the army’s use of incommunicado detention in the recent conflict, as well as allegations of torture, ill-treatment and deaths in custody.

‘The practice of incommunicado detention must be immediately brought to an end,’ said the experts, who report to the UN Human Rights Council on Myanmar, extrajudicial executions and torture respectively.

‘It is essential for detained people to be able to communicate with the outside world, especially with family members anNews d their lawyer. We are especially concerned because incommunicado detention may facilitate torture.’

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net