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Vol.4, No.2 ISBN-1906-438X May 18, 2018

A PUBLICATION OF BUDDHIST RAKHAING CULTURAL ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
www.rakhaingguardian.org
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THE CITIZENSHIP PROPOSITION

(Published on May 18, 2018)

By Maung Tha Hla

There has been a long-standing controversy between the Myanmar authorities and advocates of Bengali
rights over the restrictions on the citizenship. The ongoing issue has recently been brought to the fore as
pressure grew to expedite repatriation of the Bengalis who fled Rakhaing state across the border to
Bangladesh following due response by the national Army along with the security forces, in the aftermath
of two waves of lethal assaults in 2016 and 2017 on dozens of Border Guard outposts and an Army base
by the Bengali separatist terrorists, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army ( Harakah al-Yaqin ).

External Pressure: The citizenship issue of stateless Bengalis is at the heart of international drive against
Myanma, featuring it as the root of the solution to the crisis in Rakhaing state.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grand, raising the citizenship issue said:
"Granting citizenship to members of Myanmar Muslim Rohingya* minority is crucial for achieving peace
in Rakhaing state." He also made quite an irresponsible demand that Myanmar must grant citizenship to
the Bengali refugees to return to Rakhaing state.

He is not alone. Demand for Bengali citizenship is getting worse by the day with the proliferation of fact
finding trips to the refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Those who assume the role of arbitrators, despite being far off the circumstances surrounding the issue,
ratcheted up pressure to comply with the Bengali demand for citizenship under "Rohingya" ethnicity.
Tacitly supporting the Bengali agenda, they look the matter in one direction only through the prism of
human rights violations, echoing incessant clamour of victimhood laundered by the alien Bengalis.

In effect it is an arbitrary move toward the ratification of the idea that the citizenship is the Bengali
"human right", which is supreme to the rights of sovereign nation of Myanmar to determine who is
eligible to become its citizen; and that their bogus ethnic identity is absolute. It goes beyond being
unwise.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
* Myanmar does not recognize the Muslims in Rakhaing state as "Rohingya", who are instead named Bengalis after
the place wherefrom they originated.
The Status: The Bengalis like the rest of Indian immigrants and other foreigners became stateless out of
nationality law upon the birth of nation state of Burma in 1948, not by persecution of specific race or
particular minority religion.
In fact stateless people all over the world as high as 12 million were affected by the law of the respective
land, restricting acquisition of citizenship.

Every country has the right to act on its own unique situation. No one can set the agenda for Myanmar
which, like others, does not grant citizenship to anybody who makes it across the border; neither is
citizenship conferred upon birth in Myanmar.

The 1982 Citizenship Law was formulated on the basis of the 1947 Constitution and in line with the 1949
Burma Residents Registration Act.

Eligibility of the citizenship is determined by the nationality law. Any person who does not belong to one
of 135 national groups is subject to being scrutinized according to the 1982 Citizenship Law. The Bengalis
who have good claim will be entitled to the appropriate category of citizenship, namely, full citizen,
associate citizen and naturalized citizen. The measures are consistent with the practices to set priorities
in enforcing the immigration laws.

In Myanmar the citizenship is defined along ethnic lines. The Bengalis are not a national group through
history, nor have been registered as " Rohingya". The Bengalis and for that matter all other Muslims
were not recognized as a national group by the British Administration of Burma but recorded them
under the religion grouping. They were not among the 24 delegates representing various nationalities,
invited to the Burma Round Table Conference held in London from November 27, 1931 to January 12,
1932; nor were they included in the first constitution of Burma.

The reason the Bengali interlopers refused to participate in the National Verification Card programme, a
process pending scrutiny of the eligibility for citizenship, and also in the 2014 census, is that they are
interested only to the extent that the political label " Rohingya" can be used as ethnicity in order to
implement their agenda which, meant to have them recognized in the status of a national group, serves
as the holistic approach to the entitlement to wholesale citizenship without being subject to verification
procedure, leading down the route to the establishment of an Islamic state within Rakhaing state.

The "Rohingya" ethnicity scheme, having interned the Bengali identity in disguise of a new race angling
for an edge of being indigenous to the land, is only a socio-political manipulation upon the failure of the
Mujtahid insurrection, staking in the chance of having the illegal Bengalis legitimized as bona fide
citizens, and thus a national minority.

Islamic Domain: A shift in population balance in Rakhaing state where the Bengalis constitute one third
of the population, would only become drastic given the reported numbers of alleged "Rohingya"
Muslims abroad if they were to be granted citizenship and allowed to return, transforming the Rakhaing
state, a traditional Buddhist land, to an Islamic state posing a threat to the national security and
territorial integrity of Myanmar.

Just look at the reported numbers of the purported " Rohingya" emigres :
"Saudi Arabia-500,000; UAE-50,000; Pakistan-350,000; Babgladesh-947,000; India-40,000; Thailand-
5,000; Malaysia-15,000; Indonesia-10,000; Myanmar-484,000." The total Bengali population as
speculated is 2,392.000 against the Rakhaing state population of 3,118,963 ( 2014 census).
Over and above, the Bangladeshis have reportedly opted to feign themselves "Rohimgya" in seeking
asylum in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and Europe, in virtue of physical resemblance,
namely, the stature, complexion and countenance, other than shared religion and cultural and linguistic
similarities.
Should the so-called Bengali emigres in part, and every Tom, Dick and Harry from across the border
were to conjure up the dream of conquest, having established domicile in Rakhaing state joining
the kinsfolk who practise polygyny in line with the religious belief and are known for the exponential
birth rate, the demographic landscape of Rakhaing state would upturn in favour of the Bengalis, gaining
dominion over the land.

Following as a natural effect, the beleaguered native Rakhaings will in no time be lost to the reigning
Bengali colonialists, falling into the ranks of the Aboriginals of Australia, the Inuit of Canada, the Maori
of New Zealand and the American Indians of the United States.

Colonial Legacy : The British colonization impinged a traumatic impact upon every aspect of social order
of the nation, wherefrom it has been reeling to recover. The root cause of Bengali problem lies with the
British Empire wherein mass movement of subject people, as labourers, took place between British
colonies.

Strategy Page describes, "These are Bengalis or people from Bengal (now Bangladesh) who began
migrating to Burma during the 19th century. At that time the British colonial government ran
Bangladesh and Burma, and allowed this movement, even though the Burmese opposed it. Britain
recognized the problem too late, and the Bengali Muslims were still in Burma when the British gave up
its South Asian colonies after World War II (1939-45.)

On the contrary, in a privately organized press meeting in April prior to the visit of the United Nations
Security Council delegation to his country, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood said:
"The arguments proposed by the Myanmar government on the Rohingya Muslims were baseless. The
claim that Rohingya people belonged to Bangladesh and are part of the Bengali community is false."

The Minister's assertion puts in mind what General Ne Win, the then Prime Minister of the Caretaker
Government of Burma, said to Pakistan President General Ayub Khan who disclaimed the Bengalis in the
Rakhaing region belonged to Pakistan, during a heated verbal exchange at Decca (East Pakistan) on the
former's state visit to the neighbouring country in 1958.

General Ne Win said," If the Bengali Muslims did not belong to Pakistan, where did they come from?"
"Did they drop out from the sky?" he retorted.

The above counter argument will suffice for a response to the Minister's claim since the Bangladeshis
once belonged to Pakistan and were part of the Pakistani community.

Conclusion: Attitude toward Myanmar has been tainted with prejudicial judgement, whereas the
international opinion was rallied around the alien Bengalis, having whitewashed the persistent acts of
perfidy aimed to dismember the host nation, which in fact is the core of the Rakhaing crisis.

Given the past history, the Bengalis cannot be loyal citizens, nor can they assimilate to the local
societies. Religiously infused mentality of segregation that instilled in them turns their life pitiful.
In a global climate so uncongenial to the grievances of the indigenous Rakhaings who bear tenacious
resentment against the Bengali interlopers who inveterately squatted in the ancestral lands of the
native, the question of viable means of reaching a substantive and durable solution to the crisis is as
elusive as ever.

*******

Maung Tha Hla , the author of THE RAKHAING and ROHINGYA HOAX, is founder president of the
Buddhist Rakhaing Cultural Association of the United States of America.
He was Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Organization.