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Showing posts from October 10, 2014

Flickers of Hope, Shadow of Uncertainty for Muslims in Arakan Citizenship Pilot

Moe Rue Husom, who also goes by Min Aung, shows his recently obtained green ID card, indicating that he is a naturalized citizen under Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy) The Irrawaddy October 10, 2014 MYEBON TOWNSHIP, Arakan State  — Similar to other camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Arakan State, tales of suffering are in no short supply here in Myebon, where the displaced have languished in hardscrabble living conditions for nearly two years. But these Rohingya Muslims have a little more hope than most. Here, at least, some members of the persecuted minority have had an opportunity that many others have not: the chance to receive government-issued ID cards, affording some of the rights of citizenship for the first time. All they have to do, the government says, is renounce any claim to an ethnic Rohingya identity. The Myebon IDP camp was selected by the government to pilot a national verification plan, the implication