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Mizzima: Over thirty thousand Araka



Over thirty thousand Arakan nationals are denied national identity
cards, says a dissident group

New Delhi, March 11, 2000
Mizzima News Group

More than thirty thousand Arakan nationals are deprived of citizens'
rights as the government refused to issue National Identity Cards to
them, according to an exiled group which is monitoring human rights
violations in Arakan State of Burma.

India-based Arakan Human Rights Watch (AHRW) today says that about
thirty thousand Arakan nationals living in and around Sittawe (Capital
of Arakan State) have no national identity cards as the government
refused to issue new identity cards to them.

After it came into power in 1988, the present military government in
Burma issued new National Identity Cards for the citizens after
abolishing existing identity cards.

"In Burma, you cannot do anything without identity card. You cannot
travel to city to city, you cannot join colleges and universities. You
cannot do business. So, thousands of these Arakan nationals are denied
of their basic citizen rights while staying in their own country. They
cannot even visit to their relatives when someone of their relatives
died in Mandalay or Rangoon. They are in fact like under house arrest in
their own places," said Khaing Aung Kyaw from Arakan Human Rights Watch.

Hundreds of Arakan nationals are also staying without identity cards in
other parts of the State, he added. These include Maung Taw township,
Buu Thee Taung township and Paut Taw township.

Though they have written many times to the Home Ministry on the issue,
there has been no reply so far from the government. Some Arakan
nationals in 1990 even formed a political party and entered the
elections with the promise of getting back identity cards to these
unfortunate Arakan nationals.