Their status is officially of being "stateless" courtesy the 1982 (Citizenship) Law. The term "citizen" used within means a Burma citizen. Clause 3 of the Act states as follows: "Nationals such as the Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin, Burman, Mon, Rakhine or Shan and ethnic groups as have settled in any of the territories included within the State as their permanent home from a period anterior to 1185 B.E., 1823 A.D. are Burma citizens." With the stroke of a pen, all those whose ancestors settled to Mynmar post 1823 have no citizenship, no claim to any rights, their presence is undocumented and they are immigrants for all practical purposes. The law states the ethnic races by name whose settlement is "legal', excluding those not named even anterior to 1823. In educated western democracies like U.S, citizenship requires patient steps - not a generation after generation of denial on grounds of ethnicity. Originally from North Rakhine in Mynmar, many Rohingyas left for Bangladesh to avoid the crackdown of 1978. Under pressure internationally; Burma was pushed into a repatriation agreement with Bangladesh. In a sly move, within a period of three years of this acceptance, the Burmese government enacted the 1982 citizenship law.
This poses an interesting question: can a law have a retrospective effect so to take away the existing citizenship, relegating them to "stateless" individuals? If the government found it imperative to enact a law, it must not completely overturn the rights and duties existing as in the case under question. This is reflected clearly in the concept of "Principle of Legality.' The rationale is to ensure that all actions are based on well thought out legal reasoning and are not politically motivated. The absurdity of laws having retrospective effects is laid out in many international laws and spelled out in international treatiesie1949 Geneva Convention III (Article 99, first paragraph): "No prisoner of war may be tried or sentenced for an act which is not forbidden by the law of the Detaining Power or by international law, in force at the time the said act was committed." Therefore, there is an estoppel that does not offer a carte blanche to institute laws having retrospective effect.
All civilized nations form laws for all its citizens - not to victimize a group within. An example of this is the text of Executive Order No 11246 of the United States Labor Department that deals with Ethnic/National origin, Color, Race, Religion & Sex Discrimination. It states, "Executive Order 11246 prohibits covered federal contractors and subcontractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and requires affirmative action to ensure equal employment opportunity without regard to those factors."
To the UN I beseech; pass a resolution against these atrocities and ensure citizenship for the local Rohingya. The bloody atrocities against them are a clear case of ethnic discrimination. UN must play the role of a strong international organ.
The writer is a lawyer, academic and political analyst. She has authored a book titled A Comparative Analysis of Media & Media Laws in Pakistan.
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