A demonstration over identity cards at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh in April, 2018. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images.

In 2016, Nural, as a leader in a Rohingya village in Rathedaung, was called to a meeting by a high-ranking officer from the Myanmar Border Guard Police. There, Nural and the gathered village leaders were told all Rohingya must now accept identity cards, known as nationality verification cards (NVCs), or they would “no longer be allowed to remain in the country” and be “driven out”. Despite the risk of speaking out, Nural raised his voice in the meeting, “These NVC cards make us into foreigners who are supposed to apply for citizenship. We are already citizens of this country.” In his frustration and anger, he pounded his fist on the table three times. Four armed officers pointed their guns at his head, escorted him out of the room and handcuffed him to a chair. Fortunately, he was not among the 30 men who were arrested in the village that day. He was not the man who was shot dead while running away from the guards that came searching for his father-in-law. He was not the man who was sentenced to seven years in prison, or the one who was blinded in one eye by police beatings. His village escaped being burnt that day – only to be razed a year later.
 

“These cards make us into foreigners… We are already citizens of this country.”

Nural is only educated to primary level, but he knows well the history of his people. He knows his Rohingya forefathers have resided in the north Rakhine region centuries before the Burmese generals in power now, who are Johnny-come-latelies by comparison. He knows that his parents and grandparents carried the same citizenship cards and had the same rights as all other citizens of independent Myanmar. And that Rohingyas’ proof of citizenship and belonging has been systematically removed over the past thirty-five years through the confiscation, destruction, nullification, and targeted non-issuance of documents, all carried out by multiple civilian and military agencies under a single command. He is sure that NVCs are just the latest in a long-line of ID cards that attempt to recategorise Rohingya as foreigners, attack their group identity and remove their rights.

In all Rohingya communities, village chairmen and yar ein hmu (leaders of 100 households) like Nural were ordered to accept the cards. They were told if they did not, they would be dismissed from their positions and punished under the law. Some held out – others could not. Nural tells me with pride that his was one of eight villages in Rathedaung that stood united against the NVCs. He, himself, held out. He was just one of many Rohingya who resisted the destruction of their identity as a group indigenous to the Rakhine region by refusing the cards. 

Now, after having fled across the border into Bangladesh, Rohingya are facing a new chapter in their struggle against identity cards. But this time threat is coming from an unexpected source – the United Nations refugee agency – who have proposed a form of documentation which Rohingya claim is almost identical to the cards imposed by the Myanmar state.
 

Nationality verification and genocide

Between 2016 and 2017, villages were subjected to night-time “security” raids which villagers say were linked to the NVC cards. One man described with tears of anger and sadness that his older brother died after being bitten by a snake while hiding in the forest one night. As the men hid, they left behind women and girls who were repeatedly subjected to sexual violence at the hands of the security forces. “I cannot even speak of what happened to our women, while we hid.” he said.Across ten focus groups and multiple in-depth interviews, I have been told that without the NVCs, school children were not allowed to sit for final examinations, fishermen could no longer fish, cattle traders could no longer go to market, businessmen could no longer pass through checkpoints, parents could no longer register the births of their children, prisoners could not be released at the end of their sentences, sick people could not go to the hospital, and retirees could no longer draw their salaries. It became barely possible to eke out a living, support a family or survive. The attempted enforcement of identity cards was, and still is, aiding, what the Indian philosopher Amartya Sen has described as, a “slow genocide” in Myanmar. But still communities hold out. Rohingya accounts of the enforced issuance of NVCs are full of heroism, tragedy, unity, pride and occasionally shame, where they could no longer endure.
 

The attempted enforcement of identity cards was, and still is, aiding the “slow genocide” in Myanmar. 

In focus groups, I have often heard NVCs refered to as “genocide cards” by Rohingyas. Following the outbreak of violence in August 2017, the vast majority of Rohingya fled their homelands; many were killed or driven out of the country by terror, their homes burned, and their lands stolen by the state. A nationality verification process, originally (and sometimes still) promoted by international agencies as “a pathway to citizenship” for “stateless” Rohingya, has compounded the physical, symbolic and cultural destruction of a group.

Unsurprisingly, the 800,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh’s refugee camps are insistent that among their conditions of return to Myanmar is the end of NVCs or NVC-like procedures.¹ They are demanding an end to being labelled “Bengalis”, “foreigners” or “stateless.” They want their citizenship to be recognised and to be called by their own name, Rohingya, as an indigenous group of Myanmar. It is not simply a matter of access to citizenship rights. It is also a matter of safety, security and survival.
 

Resistance to UNHCR’s “smart cards” in Bangladesh refugee camps

Displaced Rohingya are also uniting in their resistance to another kind of ID card – the “smart cards” being issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Despite a deep and tangible yearning to return home, they are resisting premature or forced repatriations by refusing to accept UNHCR-issued biometric “smart cards”. These cards are being issued following the memorandum of understanding between the UNHCR, the United Nations Development Programme and the Myanmar government relating to repatriations to Myanmar. Although the UNHCR and the Bangladesh government claim the cards will not lead to immediate repatriation, Rohingya are understandably wary. The UNHCR are in a predicament. Without issuing cards, they struggle to “be operational.” But Rohingya are resolute in their rejection – operations or not.

A demonstration during a UN Security visit at a Rohingya camp on 29 April, 2018. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images

On a visit to a refugee camp in Bangladesh to ask people about citizenship in Myanmar, not smart cards, it soon becomes apparent that the two are linked. The small crowd that gathers around me as I sit in a small open-air shelter steadily grows as the conversation moves on to smart cards. “Please do something about the smart cards, please”, one young refugee begs of me.

Reports have been circulating for several months among the camp population that there may be shadowy organisations offering 500 Bangladeshi Taka to each family willing to break ranks and take the cards, or that beatings by security officers taking place outside the UNHCR office are doled out for those that refuse. There’s buzzing concern and a subdued sense of confusion and betrayal that a group of residents in another camp have reportedly accepted UNHCR’s smart cards. In almost all of my conversations with refugees over the past two months, the issue of “smart cards” has come up as a major concern related to safety and security on return to their homelands in Myanmar.

So, what’s wrong with the cards? Firstly, Rohingya are asking that they be recognised on the cards as “refugees”, a term the Bangladesh government is reluctant to entertain fearing it will contribute to the protracted nature of the Rohingya refugee issue in Bangladesh. For Rohingya, whose family and oral histories are ingrained with accounts of repatriations at gunpoint over the past 40 years and the confiscation, destruction and nullification of the documents that prove their citizenship on return, the term “refugee” offers some degree of international protection. It also offers proof that they crossed from their home in Myanmar. Myanmar has labelled past returnees “Bengalis” and the UNHCR, who has presided over the monitoring of returnees in the past, has been powerless to prevent further abuses.
 

Refugees are insisting that the UN refugee agency cards carry the term “Rohingya”.

Secondly, refugees are insisting that the UNHCR cards carry the term “Rohingya”, running contrary to the agency’s practice of not stating ethnic identities on ID cards, lest it result in discrimination. Rohingya demands for recording their identity as a group indigenous to the Rakhine region of Myanmar, relate not to international practices but to practices within Myanmar in which the only variety of citizenship worth having is one based on the membership of an ethnic group considered by the state to be pre-colonial or indigenous – one recorded on all documents. Since these refugees have been targeted for no other reason than their membership of a group, Rohingya understand that the public acknowledgement of their ethnic identity by the Myanmar state is absolutely essential in halting and preventing the ultimate crime against a group, genocide.

Thirdly, and most significantly, Rohingya repeatedly state that “the smart card is the same as the NVC card”. They have an important point here – smart cards may well not be so different from NVCs in terms of outcomes. All biometric and biographical information handed over to the UNHCR will be shared with the Myanmar government in the event of repatriations, and this can then be used, to produce the identification cards issued by the Myanmar state. But much more importantly, as one bright young refugee explains, jabbing aggressively with his finger at clause 15 of the leaked MOU between UNHCR, UNDP and Myanmar on repatriations, the agreement states after Myanmar has carried out the “necessary verifications” they will issue “appropriate identification papers” and provide a “pathway to citizenship to those eligible”.  In short, the ID cards issued on return, using the data from the UNHCR smart cards, will either be NVC cards or something very similar, that require Rohingya to have their nationality verified by a government that has systematically removed evidence of their citizenship and evidence of Rohingya existence, as part of a 40-year genocidal process. If returnees are lucky, or perhaps unlucky, they may be provided with a citizenship document that labels and stigmatises them as “Bengali” – but certainly not “Rohingya”, not indigenous and not entitled to the same rights as other citizens.
 

The poisoned chalice of “pathways to citizenship”  

What is even more problematic for Rohingya is that the UNHCR along with other international agencies have since the 1990s promoted “pathways to citizenship” as the way to resolve what they have historically understood to be Rohingya’s de jure statelessness. The “temporary registration cards” or “white cards” issued to Rohingya from 1995 onwards, during the UNHCR’s time in the Rakhine state, gave material form to the international rhetoric that Rohingya were “stateless”. One high profile camp-based Rohingya activist claimed, “when UNHCR told us to accept these white cards in Myanmar, they effectively labelled us as stateless.” Since they had citizenship before the 1982 citizenship law, under the law, they should still be entitled to it.
 

Rohingya across five countries find the label “stateless” hurtful and harmful. 

Rohingya across five countries, have consistently told me how hurtful and harmful they find the label “stateless” as, for many, it suggests that they have never been recognised as citizens. “Pathways to citizenship” is generally a way for international agencies to mediate between a neglectful state and undocumented people. It is perhaps less appropriate in a situation of genocide with the wilful denial of the rights and the existence an indigenous people.

“The good news”, I tell the young guy angrily prodding a copy of the MOU, “is the UN Fact Finding Mission report is the first UN report that does not call you de jure stateless, but de facto stateless. Just like any other refugee in the world. They recommend the reinstatement of your full citizenship.” His smile flickers, but he doesn’t appear reassured.

We can only but hope that the change in discourse brought by the FFM report, which also describes the Rohingya persecution as “genocide”, will help to finally bury the idea of NVC cards as part of a solution for Rohingya. In the refugee camps, it is hard to miss the simmering anger and indelible mistrust of the UNHCR for its inability to ensure voluntariness, safety and rights during two previous rounds of forced repatriations in 1978-9 and 1993-4; and for its lack of refugee consultation and transparency in negotiating the conditions of potential Rohingya returns this year. Promoting smart cards for genocide survivors, as though ID cards can provide a neutral record of external facts about human beings, just isn’t going to wash this time. As one Rohingya political leader told me, “it is impossible for the UNHCR to ensure repatriations if they cannot even issue the smart cards on a voluntary basis.” It’s time to stop talking about “pathways” – treacherous as they have been for Rohingya – and to start listening to Rohingyas’ own understandings and interpretations of how the genocide has played out, including how they feel about the “genocide cards” and “smart cards”. Rohingyas know the significance of these cards, more than anyone else, UN included. The survivors voice must carry the greatest weight.

*Names have been changed to protect interviewees.

Natalie Brinham is a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London researching statelessness. She has worked for many years in NGOs in the UK and Southeast Asia on forced migration, trafficking and statelessness in both frontline service provision roles and research and advocacy roles. She holds an MA from UCL Institute of Education and a BA from SOAS.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/

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The fire started in one of the shanties at 2 pm on Sunday and continued until 4 pm. By the time people could douse the fire, the whole camp was reduced to ashes.

“We were called to give fingerprints in the local SP office and everyone from the camp was there,” recalls Mohammad Alishan a grocery supplier to shops in the Rohingya slums in Nuh district.

“At around 2 pm when a few of us came back to the camp, we saw one Jhuggi on fire and gradually it spread to others. There were cylinders in Jhuggis which made the fire uncontrollable for us,” he told TwoCircles.net.

Alishan’s savings of the last six years were all destroyed and he could only save the pair of clothes he was wearing. The refugees are presently living in a tent provided by the district administration under the open sky.

“It is very hot in here. We are living in open plots. There is no relief as such apart from food and water and we don’t know how and when we will be able to construct our huts again,” Mohammad Hassan, 25 a labourer.

According to Ali Johar, who has been coordinating the relief efforts of NGOs and administration, told TwoCircles.net, “This is the second time that a Rohingya Camp has caught fire in Haryana in last two years. With the soaring temperature and refugees living in open sky amid fasting, we are going to suffer immensely in the coming days.”

He further urged the government and NGOs to come forward to help the refugees by constructing huts for them at the shortest possible time.

Repeated incidents of fire in camps
Last year in April, five huts of Rohingya refugees caught fire in Nangali gaon in Mewat district of Haryana, leading to one person being severely burnt, besides the loss of household materials. The fire had also consumed a portion of a makeshift mosque, a school, and a madrasa. In another similar incident, a fire engulfed more than 8 jhuggis of Rohingya refugees living in Bhagwati Nagar area of Jammu city.

On November 26, 2016, 80 shanties belonging to Rohingya refugees caught fire in Narwal area of Jammu district in which two minor girls and a woman were killed and three others were injured.

Last month on April 15, about 44 huts of Rohingya refugees caught fire in Kalindi Kunj area of Delhi leading to minor burn injuries to two persons besides reducing the shelters to ashes along with a complete loss of household materials. The fire which started in the early hours of that morning had also consumed a makeshift mosque and a madrasa. The camp is being rebuilt by the Zakat Foundation of India (ZFI).

Right-wing involvement raises suspicion
After a Rohingya camp in Delhi was reduced to ashes last month, a member of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), in a tweet claimed responsibility for the burning of the refugee camp.

On April 15, Manish Chandela, the BJYM member had replied to a tweet reporting on the fire in the camp, “Well done by our heroes.”

“Yes we burnt the houses of the Rohingya terrorists,” he had added.

Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan and president AIMMM Navaid Hamid later filed an FIR against the right wing affiliate.

“The fire in Rohingya camps is a cause of concern and there is no doubt that there is a hate environment against the Rohingya in the country created by the people affiliated to Sangh,” Navaid Hamid, president of AIMMM told TwoCircles.net.

“These fire incidents should be thoroughly investigated by the local police,” he added.

At present, there are more than 40,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees living in four Indian states: Jammu, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Delhi.

The hostility against the Rohingya refugees has been growing since the BJP came to power in centre. The narrative of Rohingya being a security threat was initially supported by the BJP unit of Jammu and Kashmir. The Regional Jammu Kashmir National Panthers Party later joined the cause.

On August 19, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs issued a circular asking all states to identify and deport illegal Rohingya immigrants.

“Illegal migrants are more vulnerable for getting recruited by terrorist organizations. Infiltration from the Rakhine State of Myanmar into Indian Territory, especially in the recent years, besides being a burden on the limited resources of the country also aggravates the security challenges posed to the country,” the document read.

The case is presently being heard in the Supreme Court of India.

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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Bhushan posted photographs of the complaint on Twitter, captioning them, “My criminal complaint against Manish Chandela of BJYM who proudly boasted on social media that he & his associates burnt down the Rohingya camp. No action yet by @DelhiPolice to register case & arrest him & no action by BJP to remove him from party. State of rule of law under BJP”. 

Ahead of Bhushan’s complaint, the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM), an umbrella organisation of various Muslim groups, also wrote to Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik regarding Chandela’s alleged admission, and included screenshots of the tweets. “The open claim on social media by the culprit is a challenge to the Delhi Police and all other law enforcement agencies. The tweet was posted immediately after the fire in the refugee camp… We demand immediate arrest of Manish Chandela under appropriate sections of the IPC,” the letter said. 

Bhushan’s complaint also contains screenshots of tweets allegedly by Chandela mentioning his purported involvement in the fire. They show that on April 15, Chandela, whose Twitter handle was allegedly @CHANDELA_BJYM, responded to a tweet about the fire with the sentence “Well DONE BY OUR HEROES”. When another Twitter user asked about this, the @CHANDELA_BJYM handle replied, “Yes we burnt the houses of Rohingya terrorists”. The next day @CHANDELA_BJYM tweeted “Yes we did/And we do again” with the hashtag #ROHINGYAQUITINDIA.  

On Sunday, April 15, a massive fire broke out at Rohingya refugee camp in Kalindi Kunj in Delhi. The police had then said that the fire was caused by a short circuit. Although no casualties were reported, more than 225 Rohingya refugees lost their makeshift homes and possessions to the fire, which destroyed about 44 shanties. The fire spread rapidly, because shanties had plastic sheets to cover the makeshift shelters. Rohingya refugees informed news agencies that they lost all their possessions, including the limited money that they had since they lacked bank accounts. They also lost United Nations-issued special visas and identity cards. The Rohingya refugee camp had been established in 2012 by a non-governmental organisation; 46 Rohingya families lived there. 

On April 9, the Supreme Court had directed the Centre to submit a comprehensive status report within four weeks regarding the amenities at the two Rohingya camps in Haryana and Delhi following accusations that toilets and drinking water were not available. Chief Justice Dipak Misra headed a bench that questioned if it could hear a plea about such amenities just for the Rohingya while thousands of people in other Indian slums also lack them. Prashant Bhushan, representing the Rohingya, told the Supreme Court that they were suffering discrimination with regards to basic amenities. However, Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre, denied that the Rohingya were being discriminated against. The Supreme Court will discuss the issue again on May 9.  
 

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