Latest Highlight

RB Channel

The villa in Phnom Penh where the refugees have been resettled (Photo: David Boyle/IRIN)

By Abby Seiff and David Boyle
IRIN
September 11, 2015

PHNOM PENH - When word spread through this quiet suburban block in Cambodia’s capital that one of four refugees sent to the country under a controversial resettlement deal with Australia had asked to be repatriated, residents were unsurprised.

Hong Sinath, who frequently stays with his family nearby, said he had only seen them leave their guarded villa in a van with people accompanying them. "I think this place is similar to a so-called prison where they lock the people inside," he told IRIN.

Three Iranians and a Rohingya from Myanmar left Australia’s refugee detention centre in the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru to become the only refugees resettled thus far in Cambodia under the agreement. In exchange for accepting, settling and integrating refugees that Australia refuses to take, Cambodia has received AUS $55 million in aid and resettlement packages.

Lending legitimacy to the much-criticised deal, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) agreed to carry out “essential support,” including education, healthcare, social orientation and job assistance.

But just three months into the programme, the Rohingya refugee has already requested to be returned to Myanmar, raising significant questions about what efforts are being made to help the group adjust to life in a new, foreign home.

Complete freedom, except for the curfew

Cambodian Interior Ministry spokesman General Khieu Sopheak confirmed that the Rohingya man had requested that the Myanmar embassy help him return to that country. But he denied that the refugees were being prevented from moving freely and speculated that the man wanted to return “because he was homesick”.

“We don’t prohibit travel. They have the freedom to move,” he told IRIN. “Only one thing: they should be at home before 8 pm. Because they are newcomers, they have to understand very well Cambodian culture.”

Residents said they saw no evidence of their new neighbours leaving the villa to eat at the nearby noodle stand or even take a stroll down the tree-lined street.

Hong Raksmey Phalla’s house abuts the spacious compound. She often watches from her window as outsiders enter and leave the villa constantly, while the refugees stay put.

“They never go out from the gate by themselves,” she said, adding that they only seem to leave “in a white van accompanied by staff.”

Refugee assistance groups in Cambodia also suggest there has been little effort to help the refugees integrate.

Denise Coghlan of the Jesuit Refugee Service said her agency repeatedly offered assistance, including providing a Rohingya translator, only to be met with silence. Hers is the only local organisation that works closely with the country’s 63 refugees, some of whom are Rohingya.

“We have had no access,” said Coghlan. “We told the Australian embassy that we would like to welcome them and/or take them out for leisure activities. The embassy said it would pass this information on to IOM. Nothing happened.”


‘Resettlement efforts made’

A spokesman for Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection told IRIN that his government is aware that one of the refugees has asked to return home, but said efforts were being made to help them resettle.

The refugees are receiving employment counselling from a local NGO, language classes in English and the Cambodian language Khmer, as well as “cultural orientation by IOM”.

Citing “confidentiality principles,” Kristin Dadey, who runs the IOM’s Cambodian Refugee Settlement Program, said she could not comment on any policy to keep the refugees inside, but said the main goal is “to help facilitate their long-term integration into Cambodia.”

“For sure, part of their integration is interaction with the host communities, definitely,” she said. “But then again, their integration into the community is something we’re working on with the refugees themselves and also the government of Cambodia.”

Asked if there was a timetable for when the refugees would be permitted to move freely in the community, Dadey referred questions to the government.

“IOM doesn’t make those decisions,” she said.

Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition said it is clear the refugees have had their movements curtailed, and he added that the three Iranian refugees had been kept in a separate section of the compound from the Rohingya man.

“The fact that in the end he’s become isolated and desperate enough to try and find another alternative, confirms that there is no viable resettlement arrangement with Cambodia.”

People who answered phonecalls at the Myanmar embassy in Phnom Penh said no one was available to comment on the Rohingya man’s request.

A desperate decision

The fact that he is bidding to return to Myanmar also underscores his apparent desperation.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimates that at least 47,000 Rohingya have left Myanmar’s Rakhine state by boat in the past year-and-a-half alone. The predominantly Muslim Rohingya, a mostly stateless ethnic and religious minority, live under virtual apartheid with their movements strictly limited and little access to health care and education.

Many Rohingya have fallen prey to human traffickers who hold them in captivity until their families pay a ransom, while others have drowned when boats run by human smugglers capsized before reaching their destination, usually Malaysia or Indonesia.


For every 1,000 people that take the route by sea, about a dozen die from starvation, dehydration or disease, or are beaten to death by crew, according to UNHCR. Others have died in jungle prisons run by human traffickers on the frontier between Malaysia and Thailand where authorities have discovered the remains of more than 200 people over the past few months.

The Rohingya refugee in Phnom Penh would have braved the threat of traffickers to head into rough seas on a rickety boat in search of a better life. Having made it finally to the Australian coast, he would have been detained and sent to Nauru before accepting the offer of resettlement in Cambodia.

If the Myanmar authorities agree to repatriate him, his journey will have gone full circle.

(Additional reporting by Koam Chanrasmey)

Speaker of Parliament Shwe Mann (centre) arriving at an event in Naypyitaw yesterday. The former top general could be impeached based on a petition signed by over 1,700 members of his own constituency, for his "disrespect" towards the military's role in Parliament. PHOTO: EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

By Nirmal Ghosh
August 19, 2015

Thura Shwe Mann, Myanmar's Speaker of Parliament, has few options after being ousted from the leadership of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) last week - and there is speculation that he may be impeached if he defies the military-backed establishment that moved against him.

President Thein Sein, seen as a top contender for a second term after the ouster of Mr Shwe Mann and several members of his faction from the top echelons of the USDP, arrived at the party's headquarters in Naypyitaw yesterday for a rare visit and confab with the new executive committee. Until late yesterday afternoon, it was not known what was discussed.

It came as Mr Shwe Mann met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi for an hour yesterday. The two are known to have developed a close working relationship - one of the factors that pundits say led to the internal party coup against him last Wednesday night. It was also not known what was discussed at their meeting.

The embattled former top general could be impeached based on a petition launched late last month and signed by over 1,700 members of his own constituency, for his "disrespect" towards the role of the military in Parliament. 

The petition came after he allowed a vote in Parliament in June that could have rolled back some of the military's powers. The army used its bloc - 25 per cent of reserved seats - to kill the proposal, which could have made it easier to amend the Constitution; the process would have eventually been to the benefit of Ms Suu Kyi.

The procedure for impeachment is unclear, however.

What is clearer, say analysts, is that Mr Shwe Mann - "Thura" is a title meaning "great hero" - is in a vulnerable position, and choosing to fight could make things worse for him.

For one thing, Mr Thein Sein's loyalists would not have moved so decisively against him without a sign-off from the top-most echelons of the establishment.

"We have a plan to protect and cover him," a USDP Member of Parliament and supporter of

Mr Shwe Mann told Reuters news agency yesterday. "We are watching their moves."

But in a telephone interview, Mr Kyaw San Wai, who is a senior analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, said: "He has no cards up his sleeve.

"For now ,Thura Shwe Mann has had his wings clipped, so it is not that dramatic. But with an institution like the military against you, it is probably smarter to go quietly."

Mr Shwe Mann has little support from within the army.

"They are going to find a way to remove Shwe Mann not just from the party leadership but also as Speaker; I would be surprised if they left the job half finished," a Yangon-based diplomat predicted.

Mr Shwe Mann is vulnerable on other fronts.

Insiders in the President's camp have long compared him in private with Mr Thein Sein, who has a squeaky clean image and whose own family still lives in his native village in the Irrawaddy delta region, with little material change in their circumstances since he became president.

In contrast, Mr Shwe Mann's two sons are wealthy - and on the United States blacklist.

He also had made no secret of his desire to be president.

"The military institutionally views personal ambition with suspicion,'' said Mr Kyaw San Wai. "It is best to toe the line. And Mr Shwe Mann had certainly not been toeing the line.''

Buddhist monks protest against a visit to Myanmar by a high-level delegation from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in Yangon in November 2013. The clergy play a leading role in stoking anti-Muslim feeling. (Photo: Soe Zeya Tun—Reuters)

By Yuriko Koike
July 28, 2015

TOKYO – The Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, composed no sutta to religious hatred or racial animus. And yet Buddhist chauvinism now threatens the democratic process in both Myanmar (Burma) and Sri Lanka. Some of the same Buddhist monks who braved Myanmar’s military junta in the “Saffron Revolution” of 2007 today incite violence against members of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. In Sri Lanka, the ethnic chauvinism of the Buddhist Sinhalese, stirred by a former president determined to reclaim power, mocks the supposed goal of reconciliation with the vanquished Hindu Tamils.

In Myanmar, Buddhist racism is at the root of a virtual civil war in the state of Rakhine and is fueling a humanitarian crisis in which hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya have fled their country by land and sea. Most ominous for Myanmar’s future, given that all genocides are linked to official action, this racial and religious antagonism is in no way spontaneous. The Rohingya have already been stripped of their Myanmar citizenship, and a raft of new and proposed legislation that would further marginalize Islam seems certain to provoke further violence.

A new marriage law, for example, requires interfaith couples to register their intent to marry with local authorities, who will display a public notice of the engagement; only if no citizen objects to the union – highly unlikely in the present tense climate – is the couple permitted to wed. Another bill in the pipeline would forbid anyone under the age of 18 from converting to another religion, and would require even an adult seeking to convert to gain the permission – subject to repeated interrogation – of local officials.

Perhaps most disturbing, a third recent bill would allow for the imposition of Chinese-style population control on any group with a growth rate that is higher than the national average. Women could be ordered to wait, say, three years after the birth of a child before having another. Here, too, local governments, which are the most susceptible to popular prejudices, will be empowered to implement a law that seems specifically targeted at the Rohingyas, with their large families.

These laws do not yet amount to an updated version of the Nuremberg laws (the anti-Jewish legislation enacted by the Nazis in 1935). But they do reflect the agenda of those seeking to fan Buddhist resentment in order to thwart Myanmar’s democratic transition. That dark ambition has gained urgency, because the country is due to hold its first democratic presidential election since the transition began in 2011.

The Rohingyas are, of course, the main target of this strategy. But there is another target as well: Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition leader.

For now, Suu Kyi is precluded from running for President by a cynical constitutional provision that excludes anyone whose spouse or child has a foreign passport (Suu Kyi’s two sons by her late English husband hold British passports). Nonetheless, the regime, still fearing her popularity, is playing the race and religion card in order to discredit her and her party, the National League for Democracy, which won all but one of the parliamentary seats contested in the recent general election (and swept the annulled 1990 election).

By stoking Buddhist violence against the Rohingya, the regime aims to damage Suu Kyi and the NLD’s chances of victory in two ways. If she speaks out for the Rohingya, her appeal among Buddhists, the vast majority of Myanmar’s citizens, may be dented enough to preserve the army’s grip on power. If she does not defend the Rohingya, her aura of moral leadership may be dimmed among her own supporters, both at home and abroad.

So far, Suu Kyi has circumvented this booby trap with the verbal evasiveness that one would expect of an ordinary politician, rather than someone of her courage and standing. But, as the violence grows and the election nears, her room for maneuver will undoubtedly narrow. Instead of highlighting the country’s real needs – serious land reform, an anti-corruption drive, and freeing the economy from oligarchic control – she may instead be drawn into defending an unpopular minority.

A similar political imperative is at the heart of the Sinhalese chauvinism that has made a sudden return to public life in Sri Lanka. The religious and ethnic passions of the Sinhalese were encouraged during the final, bloody push that ended Sri Lanka’s quarter-century of civil war with the Tamil Tigers in 2009. But instead of seeking reconciliation with the Tamils following their defeat, then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa continued to play on ethnic hatred as he subverted Sri Lanka’s democracy.

Rajapaksa’s unexpected defeat by a coalition of Sri Lanka’s democrats and Tamil political parties in last January’s presidential election – a result that he then sought to annul – should have ended both his career and the politics of race-baiting. But the former president is now mounting a furious comeback bid and might well win the parliamentary election scheduled for August 17.

One reason for Rajapaksa’s potential victory is his deep pockets; another is that he can probably count on support from China, having allowed the construction of ports and other facilities for the People’s Liberation Army during his presidency. But the key to his fortunes has been his effort to stoke the fears of the majority Sinhalese.

Rajapaksa is thus placing Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in the same difficult position faced in Myanmar by Suu Kyi. So far, Wickremesinghe has succeeded in suggesting that the Sinhalese have more to fear from the return of Rajapaksa than they do from the country’s ethnic minorities. But no one should ever underestimate the power of hatred to undermine a democracy from within.

Yuriko Koike, Japan's former defense minister and national security adviser, was Chairwoman of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party's General Council and currently is a member of the National Diet.

Photo by UNHCR/ACNUR Américas on flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/acnurlasamericas/

By Nancy Hudson-Rodd
May 12, 2015

The international community can no longer ignore the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya, writes Nancy Hudson-Rodd.

In the last few days, hundreds of Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar, have washed up on the shores of Indonesia. According to some reports, many more thousands are still stranded at sea.

The mass exodus speaks volumes for a Myanmar apparently on the march towards political and social reform.

Myanmar’s regime is not ‘backsliding’ on commitments to democratic rule so often misleadingly reported. There was no commitment to democracy, instead two major goals: the maintenance of military rule; and the final eradication of 800,000 plus Rohingya.

What uncomfortable times to live in, times of general amnesia when the spin of Burma is applauded as the ‘truth’. Nations chose to believe a hypothetical future of democratic rule promised by Thein Sein, a former top general chosen in 2010 to be the front man for the old regime with a new façade. The 2010 election results were approved despite procedural irregularities, voter intimidation, ballot manipulation, thousands displaced in Eastern Burma unable to vote, international monitors and reporters denied access, and political prisoners held.

Aung San Suu Kyi, an international icon of human rights, when freed declared herself a politician, denied she was ever “a human rights defender”. She has supported the regime in their sham quest for democracy, the case of mistaking mirage for water. The military has carefully planned continued rule in the 2015 elections.

Roadmap to rule
Newly appointed Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt pledged to hold elections at an unspecified future date in his inaugural 30 August 2004 speech. He announced elections, as the final step of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) “roadmap to democracy”. Khin Nyunt’s speech was broadcast on Burmese state televisions and the sole national radio program, with no reporters allowed to cover the event. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Situation in Myanmar and the Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General were denied entry visas in 2004. They wanted to verify reports of increased arrests; “security detainees” given harsh prison sentences for writing, speaking, or peacefully protesting the Constitutional process which denied public comment and participation. This visa refusal, in retrospect, revealed the nature of democracy on offer in Burma.

On 10 May 2008, the regime declared the Constitution overwhelmingly approved in a fraudulent referendum process, held during devastating Cyclone Nargis. It kept troops on stand-by to crush popular unrest, rather than mobilise them for emergency and rescue missions while blocking offers of emergency aid missions from regime-friendly China and India or hostile Western powers such as USA, France and UK. To top it all off, 21 Burmese aid workers were imprisoned for helping survivors. Zargana, comedian and blogger, was sentenced to 59 years in prison, for criticising the regime’s cyclone response on BBC. He was released in 2011 as part of a general amnesty, after having his original 59-year sentence commuted to 35 years. For weeks post-cyclone, a State-run media campaign accused citizen journalists and international reporters of trying to destabilise the government, claiming on state-television that the impact of foreign media intrusion was worse than the cyclone.

From the outset, the regime’s roadmap was to install “discipline flourishing democracy”. Generals would play the role of whips, lest unruly masses, defiant dissidents, autonomy-minded minorities stray from the military’s path towards a warped neo-totalitarian dystopia. Lt-General Thein Sein, Secretary 2 of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), was in charge of drafting a Constitution (1993-2006) of their design.

As President, he explained in 2012 why it took so long to complete. “Actually, we could have wrapped all of it up in a day, but there’s a need to make it look good, isn’t there?” He rejected all proposals by ethnic and other groups, but included a clause to protect current and former military leaders, from prosecution for crimes committed. Perpetrators of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the current Home Affairs Minister, sit in parliament, reported Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic in 2014.

Army chief senior General Min Aung Hlaing confirmed in January there would be no 2015 pre-election Constitution amendments concerning military representation in parliament while conflict continues. The military can dissolve parliament anytime to “maintain the peace”. War is constant. The military commits copious abuses, terrorising civilians. Yet, only three per cent of the 1.5 million people requiring urgent support are assisted by UNHCR (2015).

The UN General Assembly resolution to create a UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in Myanmar was based on, “continued seriousness of the situation of human rights including imposition of oppressive measures directed in particular at ethnic and religious minorities….and deep concern for Rohingya” (UN General Assembly Resolution 46/132 of December 1991).

No Rohingya in regime’s Burma
The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census, completed with international financial and technical support, was declared successful despite excluding over 1 million people, including 800,000 Rohingya – who were denied citizenship and right to their identity.

As Maung Wai, permanent representative of Myanmar to the UN Human Rights Council, said on 27 March 2015:

We strongly reject the use of terminology ‘Rohingya’. The people of Myanmar do not and will not recognise such terminology since it has never existed in our ethnic history. We further reject the call to allow self-identification…a false term.

These sentiments echo Thein Sein’s thinking on the issue, who told the Washington Post in 2013 that “There are no Rohingya among the races. We only have Bengalis who were brought for farming [during British rule].”

Burma as 2014 ASEAN chair forbade reference to Rohingya. The word does not appear in Burmese state or independent media. An estimated 800,000 Rohingyas were forced to surrender all temporary white ID cards by 31 March this year. These withdrawn cards, issued under the 1949 Burma Residents Registration Act, effectively strip Rohingya of legal documentation, their identity, and last right to live in Burma.

No opposition groups came to the defence of the Rohingya. Certainly not Aung San Suu Kyi in her role as chair of the Rule of Law and Tranquillity Committee. Since being released from house arrest in November 2010, she has travelled widely, meeting royalty and the powerful, collecting her ‘human rights’ awards. Alas, she has found no time to take an hour flight from her lakeside house to visit the semi-concentration camps in Rakhine state, where nearly 150,000 Rohingyas are locked up; for their own protection of course.

Since 2012, these Rohingya, illegalised and dehumanised, remain locked in squalid state-controlled internally displaced persons(IDP) camps, isolated behind barbwire, guarded by machine-gun wielding security troops. Seventy per cent of Rohingya have no access to enough food, safe water, sanitation, and health care. Malnourishment for children under five is double the national rate, individuals are dying. The regime severely restricts humanitarian help. UN premises and most international NGOs were attacked and ransacked in 2014. Three local INGO staff are still imprisoned for speaking to international media, during the 2012 violent attacks on Rohingya. The regime denies holding political prisoners. Police, navy, army, state security forces, profit by trafficking Rohingya who escape by sea, a lucrative business worth up to $7,000 for each boatload of desperate people.

The current destruction of the Rohingya as a distinct and self-identified ethnic group is not an isolated incident of religious or ethnic violence. Based on three years of research into the plight of Rohingya, Dr Maung Zarni and Alice Cowley conclude that Rohingya have been subject to a process of “slow-burning genocide” since 1978. Both the State in Burma and the local community have committed four out of five acts of genocide as spelled out by the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide.

Amartya Sen has thrown his formidable intellectual weight, supporting the genocide characterisation at a conference on the worsening plight of Rohingya held at Harvard University in November 2014. The Sentinel Project to Prevent Genocide concludes that the risk of genocide or related mass atrocities in Burma is extremely high. Violence, discrimination, and extrajudicial killings mostly directed toward the Muslim Rohingya, conducted by both state and non-state groups are both widespread and systematic.

“Never Again”
Bernard Kouchner, French politician, co-founder of Mèdecins Sans Frontiéres and Mèdecins du Monde filed an application of the responsibility to protect (R2P) in Burma on April 2015. His application has sparked considerable debate at the UN, within civil society, and among founders and proponents of the concept. All agree the regime denies adequate protection to civilian populations by obstructing aid, holding a referendum instead of providing aid, and stealing aid to help only the regime. They disagree on whether this situation is a case of R2P.

Debate focuses on how to conduct protection in Burma, or even if it is needed. Despite growing evidence of genocide, the international community so far avoids calling this large-scale human suffering genocide. Is this due to nations framing the genocide in different terms (ethnic/ religious conflict, furthering a peace process, restoring order), or is it the denial of political implications?

Government leaders agreed they had a responsibility to protect civilians from crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide at the World Summit in 2005. If diplomatic, economic, and political means, do not effect change, then force is required.

This month an international conference on the Rohingya will be held at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway. There, some of the world’s iconic figures including George Soros; Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu; former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad; Irish peace activist and 1976 Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire; former Timor-Leste President, José Ramos-Horta; and former Prime Minister of Norway, Mr Bondevik will publicly call for the end of Burma’s policies of persecution and destruction of Rohingya.

The R2P community internationally should stop splitting theoretical and legal hairs and join this credible chorus calling for the immediate end to the slow genocide of the Rohingya. As excruciating as this genocidal process is because of its slow-motion, decades-long nature, it does give the moral citizens of our world a chance to push for its end by speaking with one voice on this most heinous crime: Burma’s verifiably intentional destruction of an entire ethnic group simply because of their ethnic identify.

It would be tragic if “Never Again” is allowed to remain an empty slogan by those who should know better — diplomats, world leaders, academics, journalists and informed global citizens.

Dr Nancy Hudson-Rodd is a senior honorary research fellow and human geographer based at Edith Cowan University.

ANURUP TITU / AP
Rohingya Muslims who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape religious violence, sit in a boat after being intercepted crossing the Naf River by Bangladeshi authorities in Taknaf, Bangladesh in 2012. Asia's more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on earth. Two recent shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea believed to have taken the lives of as many as 1,300 asylum seekers and migrants has highlighted the escalating flow of people fleeing persecution, war and economic difficulties in their homelands.

By Rod McGuirk 
April 21, 2015

About 1,300 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean in April. Here’s how other countries have responded to refugees arriving by boat.

Two recent shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea believed to have taken the lives of as many as 1,300 asylum seekers and migrants has highlighted the escalating flow of people fleeing persecution, war and economic difficulties in their homelands.

The United Nations refugee agency says it believes more than 800 people drowned when a boat packed with migrants trying to reach Europe sank on Saturday, the worst such incident ever in the Mediterranean.

About 350 of those aboard were believed to have been Eritreans. Others included people from Syria, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.

About 1,300 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean in April, taking the year’s death toll to at least 1,776.

Over the years, thousands of people in Asia have also used boats to escape. Here’s a look at where many go, and how they are treated once they arrive.

AUSTRALIA

PAULA BRONSTEIN
Detainees look out from the fence from inside the Construction camp detention center on Christmas Island, Australia in 2012.

COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, China, Somalia, Sudan, Myanmar and Vietnam.

DESTINATIONS: Most of the boats leave Indonesian ports for Christmas Island, an Australian territory 345 kilometres south of the Indonesian island of Java, or Ashmore Reef, a collection of Australian islands east of Christmas Island. They often arrive without passports, which makes repatriating them more difficult.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE: Since July 2013, Australia has refused to allow refugees who arrive by boat to settle on the mainland, and it has been turning back boats since the current government was elected in September 2013.

It has a detention camp for asylum seekers on Christmas Island and pays Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island nation of Nauru to run similar camps where asylum seekers wait while their applications for refugee status are processed.

Australia has an agreement to pay Cambodia to take refugees detained on Nauru, and with Papua New Guinea to resettle those camped out in there. So far none have gone to Cambodia, while some have been resettled in Papua New Guinea.

Australia is much more welcoming of asylum seekers who arrive by plane, although it still requires an initial period of detention. Once out of detention, some are allowed to work while others rely on welfare, including free medical care, but they are not eligible for government housing and must find accommodation in the private rental market.

INDONESIA

Indonesian police officers guard asylum seekers on a patrol boat upon arrival at a port in Merak, Banten province, Indonesia in 2012. More than 60 asylum seekers from Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan were on a boat en-route to Australia when they were caught and detained by Indonesian authorities.

COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Middle Eastern countries.

DESTINATION: Australia

GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE: Indonesia, with its thousands of islands and long stretches of unpatrolled coastlines, is a key transit country for asylum seekers and migrants wanting to get to Australia.

The country hasn’t signed the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and doesn’t legally recognize asylum seekers or refugees. But it does operate 13 detention centres around the country that temporarily house them while the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office processes their applications for refugee status and eventual resettlement in a third country such as the U.S. or Canada. Thousands more live on their own outside the detention centres.

MALAYSIA

ANDY WONG
Members of the Rohinga Muslim minority in military-ruled Myanmar stand behind the fence at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur in 2002. The group of people from Myanmar, subject to persecution in their home country, forced their way into the UNHCR seeking asylum, witnesses said.

COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: Mostly Myanmar, but also from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and Sudan.

DESTINATIONS: Most register with the UNHCR for resettlement in a third country while others travel through Malaysia to Indonesia in a bid to reach Australia.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE: As in Indonesia and Thailand, asylum seekers and refugees have no legal status in Malaysia, putting them at risk of arrest and detention.

There are no refugee camps in Malaysia, and more than 100,000 of these “urban refugees” live in overcrowded, low-cost apartments or houses across the country. Their children do not have access to formal education. Barred legally from working, many earn money doing dirty or dangerous jobs that locals shun, while they wait for possible resettlement through the UNHCR — typically a process that lasts several years.

EUROPE

ALESSANDRO FUCARINI
Migrants receive relief after disembarking in Palermo, Sicily, last week. In background, right, is harbored the King Jacob Portuguese cargo vessel, the first ship to arrive near a boat believed to be crowded with 700 migrants in distress, only to see it capsizing in the waters north of Libya on Sunday.

COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: Mainly Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia. Palestinians also have attempted to flee to Europe.

DESTINATION: Closest point of landfall, which usually means Italy, Greece or Malta. Many travel overland to Bulgaria and Hungary, favouring destinations like Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and other Nordic countries.

EUROPEAN UNION’S RESPONSE: Asylum seekers and migrants arriving in Europe without visas are interviewed and fingerprinted by authorities. EU nations have “reception centres” to house migrants where they are fed and given health care while their applications for asylum are being assessed.

Some migrants are given temporary permits allowing them to stay while their cases are studied. The country where they land is responsible for handling this, including providing free legal assistance. The process should not exceed 11 months. Those who do not qualify for residency of some kind are in some cases invited to leave Europe voluntarily, with some incentives. Others are expelled, sometimes put on a plane and flown to their home nation.

INDIA

ALTAF QADRI
Rohingya refugees living in India stage a protest demanding an end to the violence against ethnic Rohingyas in in New Delhi, India in March.

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Sri Lanka

DESTINATION: India

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE: After Sri Lanka’s civil war erupted in 1983, hundreds of thousands from the ethnic Tamil minority fled the fighting between the majority Sinhalese government and Tamil rebels demanding an independent homeland. The refugees arrived in waves — many aboard crowded, rickety wooden boats that crossed the narrow bay between Sri Lanka their island nation and India — and landed on the beaches of Tamil Nadu state.

The Indian government erected hundreds of refugee camps, where authorities questioned people to make sure they were not linked to the rebels. Once cleared, they were given living quarters, monthly rations and the chance to find work in the community.

With ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties to India’s Tamils in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, many refugees from Sri Lanka assimilated and took Indian citizenship. Others opted for repatriation offered at various times. The arrivals ceased when the Sri Lankan government crushed the rebels with months of heavy bombings and ended the war in 2009.

BANGLADESH

ANURUP TITU
Rohingya Muslims who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape religious violence, sit in a boat after being intercepted crossing the Naf River by Bangladeshi authorities in Taknaf, Bangladesh in 2012. Asia's more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on earth. Two recent shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea believed to have taken the lives of as many as 1,300 asylum seekers and migrants has highlighted the escalating flow of people fleeing persecution, war and economic difficulties in their homelands.

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Myanmar

DESTINATION: Bangladesh

THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE: Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim minority group in Myanmar, have fled to Bangladesh in recent years to escape persecution in the predominantly Buddhist nation. Roughly 400,000 Rohingya are believed to have gone to Bangladesh, where many of their ancestors came from, but only about 30,000 are officially recognized as refugees. The luckiest live in designated refugee camps, which include schools and clinics, but most either live in squalid informal camps or in poor, crowded neighbourhoods.

In 2012, when waves of Rohingya sought shelter in Bangladesh, border authorities reportedly forced more than 1,300 back into the sea in their creaky vessels. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina denied the refugees had been driven away, but made clear she didn’t want them, saying the country, already densely populated, “cannot bear this burden.”

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

OLSEN, BOB
A Vietnamese family arrives in Canada in 1978.

DESTINATION: United States, Canada, Australia

FLIGHT AND RESPONSE: The mass exodus of Vietnamese “boat people” began in 1978, a few years after the end of the Vietnam War, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to escape persecution by the victorious Communist government. Another wave followed in the late 1980s. The United Nations refugee agency says at least 840,000 left by sea.

The majority initially landed in Hong Kong and several Southeast Asian Nations that established refugee camps and threatened to push them back, but most eventually settled in the United States, Canada and Australia.

By Zin Linn
April 14, 2015

Burma watchers around the world are paying special attention at the six-party talks held at the presidential residence in Nay-Pyi-Taw on 10 April. Present at the talks were President Thein Sein, the Union Parliament Speaker Thura Shwe Mann, Upper House Speaker Khin Aung Myint, Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, Chairperson of the National League for Democracy Aung San Suu Kyi and Dr. Aye Maung who represents the ethnic parties.

According to Ye Htut, Presidential spokesman, three points were settled at the meeting - the outline for talks, the type of talks to be arranged and the time of next meeting. He declined to disclose details. The six-party talks would likely focus on peace building, national consolidation, improving the nation’s socioeconomic status and holding free and fair elections — all national objectives to be taken immediate action, as said by the president office.

All participants agreed to talk about constitutional amendments, peace building, launching a free and fair election and ensuring stability after 2015 elections. The leaders approved to meet again when the parliaments resume, Ye Htut said. The parliament will be continued its sessions on 11 May 2015.

People from all walks of life displease with the current President Thein Sein Government. Burma still cannot go into its objective of ending hostilities in ethnic areas. After President Thein Sein took office, his government seems ignoring its own promises – good governance, national reconciliation, poverty alleviation etc. – made during the presidential inaugural ceremony in March 2011.

The most crucial promise the president needs to carry out is ending civil war against ethnic rebels to implement good governance, nationwide ceasefire and poverty alleviation. His government also needs honoring ethnic people’s equal rights and self-determination so as to prevent the war.

Looking back into last year, on 16 March 2014, President Thein Sein made an address to parliamentarians, ethnic leaders and local people at the town hall in Myitkyina, during a tour in Kachin state. In his speech, he promised to build a free and open society that encourages full participation of all national races, the state-run newspaper said.

Speaking on the comprehensive reforms and equal opportunity in the nation-building activities, he called for unwavering action to resolve the disputes. Drawing comparisons with the past, he called attention to a blame game that creates evil consequences.

Additionally, President Thein Sein assured the people in Kachin State of his determination to move towards a lasting peace inspired by all people. With the exception of reaching a ceasefire, a political dialogue is crucial to have room for trust between the two sides in making peace, he added.

According to the state-run newspapers, the President also pledged to start political dialogue soon after signing a nationwide ceasefire agreement. He guaranteed that the military and the government stand united in working on peace. He stressed that the implementation of peace and stability are his administration’s main goals.

The primary criticism from the ethnic groups is that the President Thein Sein and his person-in-charge of peace process maintain economic development as key strategy. They look like considering the economic development of ethnic regions will solve the peace and conflict problem. It is indisputable that economic growth and job opportunities are necessary issues, but without addressing the corruption among the government officials, economic improvement may be a castle in the air. Besides, president should not overlook the core of the impasse is political negotiation.

In addition, the President and the military spokespersons have repeatedly made complaint the ethnic armed groups to lay down their arms, establishing political parties, contesting the elections and entering into parliament, then amending the constitution. The idea is almost impracticable to the ethnic opposition groups. To lay down their arms without any political settlement is out of the question for the ethnic armed groups.

Moreover, ethnic groups disbelieve to hold dialogue under 2008 Constitution. Instead, ethnic groups have asked meaningful political dialogues with no precondition. The constitution was drawn by the previous military junta and prohibits presidential candidates with a foreign spouse or child, a paragraph intentionally put in charter rejecting Suu Kyi as her two sons are British citizens. The charter also allows a quarter of parliamentary seats for unelected military officers with promises to set aside the defense, home and border affairs ministries under the military.

Speaking while on a trip to Australia in November 2013, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi told an audience at the Sydney Opera House that the country had still not “successfully taken the path to reform” because the military-written 2008 constitution bars the country from becoming a democracy.

Burma’s main opposition NLD party led by Aung San Suu Kyi has called, during recent nationwide campaign, for public support for her party’s proposal to ratify constitutional reform particularly for Article 436. Aung San Suu Kyi has called again and again that Article 436 barred to amend every article of the 2008 Constitution. It says every amendment proposal must be approved by 75 percent of representatives in both houses of parliament. As the military holds 25 percent of all seats, it effectively holds veto power over the Constitution, she says.

In an interview with Reuters on 3rd April, the Nobel laureate told Reuters that her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party was "ready to govern" but that President Thein Sein was insincere about reform and might try to postpone the election. It is also remarkable that Aung San Suu Kyi has an option of boycotting the upcoming elections.

If a military-drafted constitution unchanged barring her becoming president, Burma’s political scenario ahead of 2015 General Elections seems to be unrest and chaotic.

In last March, there were students’ protests against a freshly accepted education law that the students say cut back academic freedom, according to media news. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), there are 105 students under arrested including 27 facing trial in Thayawaddy and Myingyan prisons.

Detaining students who protest for academic freedom shows an undemocratic practice of previous regime. As a result, a serious doubt emerges among public. Will this government keep its words for certain free and fair elections in coming November?

By Priscilla Clapp
USIP
March 9, 2015

Burma’s Union Election Commission (UEC) appears to be preparing for a much more transparent and inclusive parliamentary election in 2015 than we saw in 2010. Its work with civil society, political parties and international organizations already stands in stark contrast to its management of the 2010 balloting. The test of its performance, of course, will be whether the contestants in the election believe the outcome has not been unduly manipulated.

Photo Credit: Htoo Tay Zar, Wikipedia

The legacy of 2010

The 2010 elections, which produced the current government, were far from "free and fair." The military junta was still in place, dictating the terms of the elections to the election commission. Military leaders were determined to produce an electoral outcome that delivered the vast majority of parliamentary seats to the government party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). They knew this could not be accomplished in a fair and transparent election, particularly with competition from the opposition National League for Democracy, which had won the vast majority of seats in the 1990 elections.

Therefore, they produced election rules that effectively eliminated the NLD from the elections and forced all government employees, military personnel and many other groups to vote early under the watchful gaze of election officials and USDP members. In many cases, the officials marked the ballots for the voters. When the votes were being counted in constituencies where the USDP candidate was losing, they brought in boxes of "early" ballots to throw the vote to the USDP. Election monitors were not given full access to the voting and counting procedures, and the only international observers were from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

It was no surprise that the USDP, despite being unpopular, won more than 80 percent of the elected parliamentary seats. This plurality, along with the 25 percent of the parliamentary seats occupied by appointed military officers, assured that military and ex-military leaders would control the proceedings of the new parliament.

The promise of 2015

The 2015 elections, planned for late October or early November but not yet scheduled, promise to differ fundamentally from 2010 in several ways. First and foremost, there is no longer a military junta to dictate the terms of the election. Primary responsibility for the elections is now in the hands of the UEC, and not the generals, and the UEC has pledged to run "free and fair" elections to the extent possible.

Because the new government holds itself to be “democratic,” the UEC, in turn, must now respond to the concerns of a wide range of interest groups: the three branches of government, the political parties, civil society and the international community. This will require a degree of consultation and transparency that has been absent from previous elections during the past 50 years.

Second, the NLD, along with a large number of smaller parties, will be competing nationwide against the USDP in a relatively open political atmosphere. These political players are all keeping close watch on the activities of the UEC and so far finding it possible to negotiate when they disagree with new rules. The UEC has, for example, allowed political parties and other participants to comment on proposed election rules and procedures before finalizing them, in contrast to 2010, when the UEC – under pressure from the USDP and the generals – produced arbitrary election rules.

Third, it appears that early voting will be limited and carefully monitored, although detailed rules have not yet been made public.

Finally, the 2015 elections promise to be open to full monitoring by local political and civil society organizations and widely observed by international groups. Under these conditions, it will be very difficult for the government to repeat the voting irregularities of 2010.

Monitoring plans

The UEC has, for example, been developing a working partnership with civil society organizations (CSOs) to monitor the 2015 elections. In December, the UEC provided them a draft code of conduct for election monitoring, asking for comments. In mid-February, the UEC met with over 60 local civil society and international organizations, accepting most of their suggestions and promising to produce a final draft within two weeks. This has resulted in changes to about two-thirds of the original draft code of conduct, with an entire chapter on “Prohibitions” being removed.

“The UEC agreed to most of the points that CSOs demanded changes on, and it is amazing that they agreed,” said a project manager of the Election Education & Observation Partners (EEOP) – a consortium of civil society organizations.

The UEC also has been developing new voter lists to produce a centralized voter roster that will allow members of the public to file appeals if they believe someone has been wrongfully included or excluded. The People’s Alliance for Credible Elections (PACE), which follows the work of the UEC, said that because of criticism of the voter lists in the 2010 balloting and the 2012 parliamentary by-elections, the UEC has now arranged to computerize the data for all eligible voters nationwide at a central location in Naypyitaw.

Voter lists are being compiled in three stages, with preliminary results released sequentially in January, March and May, and the final voter list to be announced three months before the elections. PACE is satisfied so far that the UEC is being responsive to public concerns, but they will reserve final judgment until they are certain of full transparency by the UEC. 

The greatest challenge to the UEC's impartiality will come from its relationship with the government USDP, which dominated and thus corrupted the conduct of the 2010 elections. The USDP already has many advantages built into the election system, inherited from its former existence as a mass mobilization organization for the previous military government. These advantages include many financial and material resources throughout the country, which are likely to be challenged by competing political parties both in the parliament and with the UEC. Such challenges would not have been possible in 2010.

Nonetheless, while the UEC seems determined to produce an inclusive and fair process, it remains to be seen whether it can overcome the pressures from the old guard. A coalition of the U.S., the European Union and five European nations released a statement last week affirming their support for free and fair polls, according to The Irrawaddy newspaper. The signatories all agree that “holding credible elections this year is an absolutely vital step in the reform process,” according to Andrew Patrick, Britain’s ambassador to Burma.

Priscilla Clapp is a former charge d’affaires and chief of the U.S. mission in Burma who now works with the U.S. Institute of Peace on Burma projects.

President Thein Sein Visits President Obama May 20, 2013 (White House photo)

By Rena Pederson
March 9, 2015

When he visited Washington, D.C. two years ago, Burma's new president was being hailed as an "Asian Gorbachev." America's capital rolled out the podiums and cocktail receptions because it appeared a "Burma Spring" was underway -- or at least a winter thaw.

Thein Sein was lauded for opening the economy and freeing political prisoners such as Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. The hope was that a new normal was at hand in the long-suffering country that military rulers had renamed Myanmar.

But has the former general turned out to be the reformer everyone hoped?

Not yet -- and this is the last year of his five-year term.

It should have been a clue when Thein Sein insisted, "I would like to say thatGorbachev and I are not alike, I tell you that."

Thein Sein's record is inconsistent at best:

• He allowed a human rights movie festival in Rangoon -- but Rohingya Muslims were herded into detention camps.

• He criticized corruption -- but contracts still go to cronies of generals and ministers.

• He said all political prisoners would be released by the end of 2013 -- but more have been arrested.

• He finally allowed the Red Cross access to prisons -- but humanitarian aid for thousands trapped in conflict zones has been blocked.

• He promised to allow the U.N. Human Rights Commission to open an office -- but hasn't.

• He spoke out against religious hatred -- then supported the ultra-nationalist monkWirathu, who has inflamed prejudice against Muslims.

The opaque President remains something of a paradox. His spindly, bespectacled appearance has contributed to the impression that he is a mild-mannered apparatchik, still beholden to the shadows of the old regime. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted in her memoir that the stoop-shouldered leader "looked more than an accountant than a general." 

Observers tend to say Thein Sein is "less corrupt" than other generals and was "less ruthless" as a commander. Some say he is an intelligent man in a difficult position, trying to keep control while making incremental change. Others think his primary goal all along has been to get economic sanctions removed in order to draw needed investment, not to engineer wider political reforms to please the West.

In that regard, he has been wildly successful: More than 500 businesses are taking a chance on what used to be a blacklisted backwater. They have invested more than $50 billion since the military started liberalizing the economy in 2011. Coca-Cola, MasterCard, Ford and Hilton have rushed into the untapped market of more than 50 million. Even Kentucky Fried Chicken is looking for locations.

Still, it's not a good sign that a steady stream of reporters and editors have been imprisoned or attacked. One was beaten to a bloody, unrecognizable mass and shot to death. It's not a good sign that land is still being confiscated. Or that fighting continues in ethnic regions while peace talks stretch on. Students protesting the lack of academic freedom have been attacked on the streets by police and thugs.

In retrospect, Thein Sein's early embrace of Aung San Suu Kyi after her release from house arrest now appears to have been a feint to appease western interests. The President then repeatedly snubbed the democracy leader's requests for six-party talks about constitutional reform. Instead he convened a 48-party media event with barely time for participants to introduce themselves.

After he met privately this week with Suu Kyi -- the first time in a year -- local commentators assumed it was merely to give the government "breathing room" from criticism before elections in November.

When I asked popular comedian and activist Zarganar last fall why he thinks Thein Sein has not been able to effect more change, he thought carefully before answering, "I think he is afraid of his old bosses."

It's true, Thein Sein spent 45-years as a dutiful officer; he has a military mindset and military ties. The office of President is also weak by design. Notably, the Commander in Chief of the armed forces does not report to the President and gets to appoint three of the most influential cabinet ministers (Defense, Home Affairs and Border Affairs). A National Defense and Security Council, composed largely of military stalwarts, is the ultimate authority and can re-impose martial law. There was understandable concern recently when Thein Sein handed over executive and judicial power to the military in the troubled Kokang region on the border with China.

Thein Sein, who will be 70 in April and has a pacemaker, has said he won't seek another term. But in the time he has left, he could rectify issues that have taken the bloom off the Burma Spring -- by supporting human rights and press freedom, rooting out more corruption, increasing academic freedom, curtailing executive manipulation of the judiciary and supporting more than "gentle" constitutional reform.

Thein Sein is considered the mastermind behind current peace talks -- he initiated them and has nudged them as far as they have come. The military is derailing them, but Thein Sein might regain status by getting them back on track.

The United States could help by pressing him harder to uphold the promises he made two years ago in exchange for economic favors - before more time and an election slide by.

Rena Pederson is author of "The Burma Spring: Aung San Suu Kyi and the New Struggle for the Soul of Burma."

A man identified as an ethnic Bengali holds up his temporary identity “white card.” (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy)

By Lawi Weng
March 9, 2015

RANGOON — Stateless Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State were dealt the latest blow to their prospects for obtaining recognition as one of Burma’s ethnic minorities when the government announced last month that their temporary identity cards would be rescinded.

The revocation has prompted discussion on topics ranging from national sovereignty to human rights, but the decision’s impact may most immediately be felt in a general election later this year and could presage the rise of ethnic Arakanese voices in the regional government.

The President’s Office on Feb. 11 said the so-called “white cards” granting temporary identity papers would expire on March 31, and gave holders of the IDs until May 31 to turn them over to the government.

The announcement leaves the roughly 1.5 million white card holders with a choice: Give back their IDs with little assurance of receiving an alternative identity document, or defy the government order.

For decades subject to a variety of discriminatory policies, many Rohingya are expected to do the latter, fearing that a total lack of identification will give the government cause to push them into Bangladesh. This western neighbor is where popular opinion says they belong despite many Rohingya tracing generations of lineage in Burma.

Of the country’s white card holders, the Rohingya Muslim population constitutes the largest group.

Aung Win, a Rohingya rights activist based in the Arakan State capital Sittwe, said the government’s failure to articulate of viable future for the group is fueling apprehension.

“It will not work out, their plan, because our people find that there is no transparency from the government. We have questions about what type of card they will give in lieu after we give back our cards. Are they only going to give a small white piece of paper again, which has no value?

“Many of our people are saying they will not give it back. It is hard to think about what will happen next. We heard that they will implement a system based on Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law. This will make it even more difficult [to obtain a replacement for the revoked white cards],” he said, adding that many Rohingya lacked sufficient proof of their origins in Burma to meet government standards on qualifying for citizenship.

This is likely to be particularly difficult for some 140,000 Rohingya currently living in displacement camps in Arakan State, who were forced to flee their homes, many of which were burned to the ground, in violence between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012.

Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law designates three categories of citizens: full citizens; associate citizens; and naturalized citizens. Color-coded Citizenship Scrutiny Cards are issued according to citizenship status—pink, blue and green, respectively.

A national verification pilot project was first implemented at camps for displaced persons in Myebon, Arakan State, with 209 people receiving citizenship in the initial screening. The project drew the ire of many Arakanese community leaders, however, and the plan was suspended indefinitely in October.

The fate of the pilot project has led to a logical question: Why would any larger scale effort to screen applicants for citizenship meet any other end than that of the Myebon pilot? The support—or lack thereof—of ethnic Arakanese Buddhists has proven a powerful predictor of policy direction in the state.

A Political Game?

That Arakanese influence could increase, too, as a result of the white card revocation.

The government set a precedent in 2010, when it allowed white card holders to vote in the general election that year. As a result, Arakanese politicians were unable to win regional parliamentary seats in some state townships such as Buthidaung and Maungdaw, where the majority of the population is Muslim and tends to view Arakanese parties antagonistically.

The Constitution’s Article 391(a) grants suffrage to the three types of citizens recognized in the Citizenship Law, but makes no specific reference to holders of temporary identity cards.

Burma’s Constitutional Tribunal weighed in on the matter last month, finding white card holder suffrage unconstitutional less than a week after the President’s Office announced the cards’ revocation.

Arakanese critics have long accused the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) of issuing the white cards to win votes, and the constitutional ruling came after a group of Arakanese parliamentarians asked the court to rule on the matter.

Pe Than, a lawmaker from the Arakan National Party (ANP), said the rescinding of temporary identity cards would mean an end to “white card politics.”

“First of all, we have found that by giving white card holders the vote, this relates to politics. But they [the government] found that a lot of people in the country are against their policy and even the high court pointed out that this violates the Constitution, so they can no longer play their white card politics.”

With white card holders removed from the voting rolls, Arakanese political parties have high hopes for the outcome of this year’s election, which they expect will see their members take a number of seats in both state and Union legislatures.

The ethnic Bamar-dominated central government is wary of minority influence in state parliaments, where constituencies are heavily populated by ethnic minority voters.

The Arakan State parliament consists of 34 elected members and 12 military-appointed representatives. Arakanese lawmakers hope to win a net six seats in 2015, which would give them a majority of the parliament’s 46 representatives.

Arakanese politicians won 18 seats during the 2010 election. The USDP won 13 seats, and two smaller parties—the National Unity Party and the Asho Chin National Party—both won one seat. But the Burma Army’s 13 representatives have allowed a united USDP-military front to control the legislature.

“They would not have power in parliament, even by working all together, if we win six more representatives in this election. We will have the influence and power in parliament this time,” said Pe Than, pointing to the ability of an Arakanese-majority legislature to dictate the legislature’s agenda and block presidential appointments to the powerful chief minister post as two ways in which the ethnic group would wield the influence that it seeks.


    • Rohingya Exodus