Alwaght- The Myanmar military-backed regime has categorically rejected calls that the country’s Rohingya Muslims be granted citizenship.
“Our government’s stance is that we wholly reject use of the term ‘Rohingya’. We will grant citizenship rights to Bengali people who have stayed within the boundary of Rakhine [Arakan] State based on the 1982 Citizenship Law,” read a social media post shared by Minister of Information Ye Htut, using the government’s preferred term to refer to the stateless minority.
The minister’s comments were made in the wake of the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review, a comprehensive human rights examination comprising recommendations from foreign governments, rights groups and civil society.
The Burmese government rejected more than half of the review’s 281 recommendations, including all those related to restoring civil and political rights to the country’s stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, estimated to be 1.1 million people overwhelmingly concentrated in northern Arakan State.
The Myanmar regime categorizes most of the 1.3 million Rohingyas as Bengalis, implying they are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh.
Myanmar Rohingya Muslims mostly live the western state of Rakhine where they have faced state orchestrated repression by extremist Buddhists.
Over 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar live in desperation following decades of persecution and discrimination including being denied citizenship, controls on their movements, family size and access to jobs.
In recent years, a large number of Rohingya Muslims have been killed and thousands displaced in attacks by extremist Buddhists, especially in Rakhine State. According to the United Nations , Rohingya Muslims are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.