YANGON, Myanmar — As an elected lawmaker and member of Myanmar’s governing party, U Shwe Maung attended dinners with the president and made speeches from the floor of Parliament. But this weekend, the country’s election commission ruled that despite more than four years in office, he was not a citizen and thus was ineligible to run for re-election in landmark voting in November.

“I was approved and considered a full citizen in 2010,” he said in an interview on Saturday. “Now, after five years, how could I not be eligible?”

Mr. Shwe Maung’s plight is but one example of what appears to be the mass disenfranchisement of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority who number around one million in Myanmar.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who cast votes in elections five years ago have been struck from the electoral rolls, election commission officials have confirmed, although without providing a precise number.

The final list of eligible voters is due by the end of August, but it is unlikely that any Rohingya will be added given anti-Muslim feelings in the country, Rohingya leaders say.

Persecution of the Rohingya has escalated in recent years with the rise of a shadowy Buddhist nationalist movement that has demonized Muslims and encouraged the eviction of Rohingya from the country. Although many Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, hatred has built up against them and they are referred to as Bengalis by the government, a name that implies they belong in neighboring Bangladesh.

Yet until now, they have never lost the right to vote.

The Rohingya have taken part in every election since Myanmar became independent from Britain in 1948, including one-candidate elections during the rule of the military dictator Ne Win.

“All other fundamental rights have been taken away by the authorities,” said Wai Wai Nu, a Rohingya activist who met with President Obama at the White House in June and warned of mass disenfranchisement. “If we lose the right to vote, we will be zero.”

Mr. Shwe Maung, who left the governing party earlier this month to run as an independent, was informed by fax on Saturday that he had been disqualified for re-election. The election commission said his parents were not citizens at the time of his birth, an assertion that he calls absurd: His father was a career-long officer in the national police force. Mr. Shwe Maung is appealing the disqualification.

The election on Nov. 8 has been described by Western governments and human rights organizations as a major test of Myanmar’s nascent democracy because it is the first time since military rule that democratic forces, led by the Nobel Peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, will be vying in a general election against the military-backed governing party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party.

David Scott Mathieson, a Myanmar expert with Human Rights Watch, called the exclusion of the Rohingya “a dark cloud over the democratic integrity of the elections over all.”

“This is the government really stripping them of their last right,” Mr. Mathieson said. “It suits the government’s long-term plan of compelling them to leave.”

Voter registration lists released by the election commission in June showed that more than 500,000 Rohingya had vanished from the rolls, Rohingya activists say.

U Kyaw Min, a former schoolteacher who is president of the Democracy and Human Rights Party, a Rohingya party, says the number of eligible voters in a single district, Buthidaung, fell to 27,000 from more than 150,000 in 2010.

Mr. Kyaw Min, who is Ms. Wai Wai Nu’s father, says one of his earliest memories is of accompanying his mother to vote in Buthidaung in the 1956 election.

“This is a grand discrimination against a minority,” Mr. Kyaw Min said of the removal of Rohingya voters from the rolls. “There were only two other places where this happened — in South Africa and Hitler’s Germany.”

The election commission says it cannot allow Rohingya to register to vote because they do not have proof of citizenship. Earlier this year, President Thein Sein, acting under pressure from Buddhist nationalists, decreed that the special identity cards held by the Rohingya, known as white cards, would no longer be valid and that Rohingya would have to undergo a citizenship test in order to obtain new cards.

Tens of thousands of white cards were surrendered to the government. Other Rohingya lost all their possessions when they were chased from their homes by Buddhist mobs in a series of deadly pogroms that began in 2012.

More than 140,000 Rohingya remain in government camps in Rakhine State on Myanmar’s western coast. Thousands more have fled the country by sea this year, leading to a regionwide migrant crisis.

The election commission says it cannot bend from its position: People must prove their citizenship before being able to vote.

“If the immigration officers cannot issue the cards in time, they cannot vote,” said Thant Zin Aung, assistant director of the election commission.

The widespread hatred toward Rohingya in Myanmar stems partly from resentment held over from colonial times, when the British brought Indians into the country, then known as Burma, as laborers and civil servants. Today, Buddhist nationalists warn of a threat of the Islamization of Burmese society and point to the swollen population of Bangladesh next door.

U Thar Pwint, a lawyer in Rakhine State who describes himself as moderate, says Muslim culture is not compatible with Buddhist society.

“Their culture does not allow living together with other cultures,” he said.

He proposes a radical solution for the Rohingya that is heard often among Buddhists in Myanmar.

“Even though they are noncitizens, we cannot kill them,” he said. “Our wish is that they be put in another country.”

NEW DELHI: This week, Myanmar’s Union Parliament approved two bills that placed restrictions on religious conversion and polygamy. They were the last of four controversial bills concerning race and religion to have sped through the legislature since late last year. 

The bills, concerning religious conversion and monogamy, were the last of four bills that made up a legislative package known as the “Race and Religion Protection bills,” which were first put forth by the powerful Buddhist nationalist group Ma Ba Tha in mid-2013 and reached Parliament late last year. The two pieces of legislation restricting interfaith marriage and allowing local government to impose birth-rate limits had already been signed into law, drawing harsh criticism from the international community. Critics claimed the laws could violate women’s rights and risk being used to target minorities. 

Now, with parliament approving the final two bills, without amendments as reported by Burmese-language paper “The Mirror”, the process is close to completion, needing only President Thein Sein’s final approval. 

The bills were not passed without opposition, with Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy voting against it. "The bills were approved by parliament. We are just minority party, so things do not always happen like we suggest," National League for Democracy MP Win Myint told AFP. 

Details are still sketchy but the passing of the bills has drawn sharp criticism, especially as the legislation has been driven through by radical monks who claim that their religion is under threat, with violence against minority communities in the country increasing. 

The bill also comes as Myanmar prepares for crucial elections in November this year, that are being seen as a key test of its democratic transition after decades of military rule. 

David Mathieson of watchdog Human Rights Watch said the legislation "champions an ultra-nationalist agenda" and could fuel religious instability. "This could be used in the lead up and after the election to crack down on religious minorities," he said as quoted by AFP. 

AFP also quoted monk Wirathu who welcomed the decision, saying, All citizens are safe if we have these laws. They are very important for peace and national security.” 

Wirathu has gained notoriety over the last few years for his firebranch speeches, including one in which he called UN rights envoy Yanghee Lee a "whore" because of her position on Rohingya muslims -- one of the most persecuted groups in Myanmar who have borne the brunt of the country’s rising anti-Muslim sentiment. 

Rohingyas have been termed one of the most persecuted minorities in the world by the UN, and their position is in part linked to the denial of rights entrenched in Myanmar’s legal system, which these new laws will only exacerbate. The system’s context lies in the 1982 Citizenship Act, which supersedes all citizenship regimes in Myanmar. The Act created three classes of citizens - full, associate, and naturalised. Full citizenship is reserved for those whose ancestors settled in Myanmar before the year 1823 or who are members of one of Myanmar’s 135 recognized national ethnic groups - which, according to the recent census, continues to exclude the Rohingya. Associate citizenship applies to those who have been conferred citizenship under a previous 1948 law, which requires an awareness of the law and a level of proof that few Rohingyas possess. Naturalised citizenship is applicable to those who have resided in Myanmar on or before 1948, and here too, the Rohingya are denied citizenship as the government of Myanmar retains the discretion to deny citizenship even when criteria are adequately met. 

It is under the legal system and the denial of recognition that the Rohingya continue to remain a stateless people. Myanmar, which as a member nation of the UN is obligated to promote “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction,” fails to do so for the Rohingyas who are subjected to policies and practises that constitute violations of their fundamental rights and freedoms. They face restrictions on movement, forced labour, land confiscation, forced evictions, extortions and arbitrary taxations, restrictions on marriage, employment, healthcare and education. 

There is an element of political opportunism in reference to the Rohingya in Myanmar. In 1990, Rohingya were permitted to form political parties and vote in multiparty elections. Myanmar even accepted about 250,000 repatriated Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh in 1992 and 1994 issuing Temporary Resident Cards to some. Rohingyas were permitted to vote in the 2008 constitutional referendum and 2010 elections. In fact, in the 2010 elections the voting rights were tied to the promise of citizenship if the Rohingya voted for the military regime’s representatives. However, Rohingyas are yet to be included as a part of any reconciliation programme involving ethnic groups, with Myanmar’s President Thein Sein, in the wake of the 2012 violence, stating that the Rohingya could not and would not be accepted as citizens or residents of Myanmar, going as far as to asking the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to consider placing the Rohingya in camps outside of the country and resettling them to others. While it is true that Thein Sein and other Myanmar officials have had to moderate their position since due to external international pressure, Myanmar continues to violate UN convention by rendering the Rohingya stateless. A relevant convention is the Convention of the Reduction of Statelessness which obligates states to prevent, reduce, and avoid statelessness by granting “its nationality to a person born in its territory who would otherwise be stateless.” The Myanmar government is in clear violation of this convention, with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya having been displaced in the last 25 years. 

It is this system that has perpetuated violence against the Rohingyas in Myanmar, with violent clashes between the country’s majority Buddhist population and the Rohingyas leading to deaths and displacement of the minority muslim community in 2012, 2009, 2001, 1978 and 1992, amongst other instances. In the most recent case of widespread violence in 2012, hundred of Rohingya villages and settlements were destroyed, tens of thousands of homes razed, and at least 115,000 Rohingyas displaced in camps in Myanmar, across the Bangladesh border, or further afield on boats. 

The UN has termed the Rohingyas one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, a condition aggravated by the role of countries such as Bangladesh and Thailand that have turned back genuine refugees, with Thailand’s military being accused in 2009-10 of towing hundreds of Rohingya out to sea in poorly equipped boats and scant food and water after they tried to flee Myanmar. Although Thailand “categorically denies” the charge, the accusations have some merit as about 650 Rohingya were rescued off India and Indonesia, some saying that they had been beaten by Thai soldiers. 

It is under these circumstance that rights groups have alleged that the Myanmar government is supporting a policy of “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya, with William Schabas, a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars saying that “the Rohingya are the prima facie victims of the crime against humanity of persecution,” consisting of “the severe deprivation of fundamental rights on discriminatory grounds.” 

The Rohingyas miserable plight is attributable to a combination of the actions of the Rakhine Buddhist majority and the inaction of the Myanmar government, within the context of a legal system that ratifies, condones, and perpetuates the systematic discrimination of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

Children and families in Myanmar’s Rakhine state are still recovering from the sectarian violence that erupted in 2012. Many live in camps, where they are vulnerable to both water shortages and floods. UNICEF is currently helping flood-affected families access clean water, but when we visited in early June, before heavy monsoon rains and a tropical cyclone caused extensive flooding, they faced the opposite problem – water shortages caused by a prolonged drought.

SITTWE, Myanmar, 21 August 2015 – A boat journey of less than an hour separates Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state, from Ah Nauk Ye village, where more than 1,000 Muslim families were relocated after the 2012 intercommunal violence in Rakhine State. Although the camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) was set up a few steps away from the waterfront, it faces serious water shortages every dry season.

Nour Hartu, 25, arrived at this camp with her youngest daughter, after fleeing the Muslim-majority Paukio Taw Town. Her husband migrated to Malaysia more than a decade ago, and a few years later her parents-in-law followed in his steps.

“They secretly took my eldest daughter to Malaysia,” Nour Hartu reveals. “Every hour of every day, I miss my village. I had a big, strong house and a small business. All my memories of my oldest child are there.”

Sometimes, Nour Hartu receives a phone call from her daughter, who is studying and living in Malaysia with her grandparents. But she hasn’t received a single word or help from her husband.

She is not sure exactly how old her daughters are. She calculates that the eldest, Yasmin Ara, is over 10 years old, and Tosmin Ara is over 9 years old, although she looks younger. Tosmin, who never had the chance to meet her father, is now attending second grade at the camp’s temporary learning centre. 

Living on rations 

With no freedom of movement and no job, Nour Hartu depends on food aid to survive. Whatever she saves from her ration, she exchanges for fish or other essential goods. She also receives a ration of 10 litres of drinking water each day. This year, the water shortages were worse than ever before, provoking disputes between camp residents and the nearby host community, where villagers didn’t want to share the water from their ponds. 

UNICEF and Solidarités International are working closely with the Rakhine state government to address the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) problems faced by families living in the camp. Together, they have distributed water to fill seven ponds, supported the treatment process, and made sure that every person has five litres of safe drinking water per day. 

“Now I feel safe because the water is treated. With the rainy season coming, the water problem should ease, as the ponds are filled up with rainwater,” Nour Hartu says.

Migration village

Ponnek Yun was one of the few townships in Rakhine not affected by the 2012 violence. But it has not been spared of water shortages. Most villagers rely on rain for drinking water, but this year it hasn’t been enough. For most of the year, what little water they have has been rationed.

Nan New Oo, 14, knows the problem well. When she is not at school, she fetches water from one of the ponds. “I can carry two jars at a time,” she says. “This water is only good for cooking. If we need to drink, we fetch water from the margins of the pond, let it settle for 24 hours and filter it through a piece of cloth.”

Nan New Oo learned this trick from her 34-year-old mother, Ma Hla Sein, who also uses ahla (a type of aluminium) to purify the water. “This is the village’s traditional water purification method,” she says. 

Ma Hla Sein takes care of her children on her own, because her husband migrated to Thailand for work – as did the majority of the men in the village. “My husband used to make one dollar a day working in the fields,” she says. “Sometimes, I would do construction work to make up to three dollars a day. Now, my husband is making three times more cutting wood in Thailand.”

Ma Hla Sein has recently been attending safe water and hygiene awareness sessions, provided by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), with support from UNICEF. UNICEF has also distributed purified water and water purification tablets, and six ponds have been built or renovated in the township.

Dignity and equal opportunity

UNICEF aims to ensure that all children in Rakhine State can develop to their full potential. To do this, it works to tackle child poverty, promote development and child rights, and meet the humanitarian needs of people displaced by violence.

Rakhine is one of the poorest states in Myanmar, and families are less likely to access basic services than in other parts of the country. UNICEF is working with the state government and partners to ensure that every family in Rakhine has access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or legal status.

“Every child has a right to safe water, although the way UNICEF supports families might differ, depending on the situation they live in, such as camps, communities or remote areas,” explains UNICEF WASH specialist Bishnu Pokhrel. “In order to build a peaceful society, we need to ensure that all families can access services and live with dignity and equal opportunity.”

These two families have found a solution to access drinking water, but for both of them someone is still missing: “I don’t want another husband or family,” says Nour Hartu. “I only have one dream: to have my eldest child with me again, so the three of us can live together.”

While her 11 year-old brother wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and migrate to Thailand, Nan New Oo wishes it was the other way around. “I miss my father,” she says. “I want him to come back… with money.”