No one can reasonably dispute that Rohingya are Myanmar citizens
There is a simple point which puts the Rohingya crisis in a new light. Aung San Suu Kyi, with her obsession with the “rule of law” – not to mention the circumstances of her own children – certainly knows all about it, yet she never publicises this fact.
A new-born baby is a citizen of the country in which it is born. That’s it.
This fundamental legal principle is respected by all civilised countries.
For example, a baby born to American parents in the United States is a new American. This is formalised through the birth certificate and through the baby getting its own identification number – in the US its social security number. But a baby born in America from parents who are citizens of other countries, parents who may be working in the US or even just visiting, becomes an American as well. The parents can take the baby home to their country of origin and have its nationality registered there so that it becomes a dual national, a citizen of both countries. This is the way it works, and while there may be some abuses, such as wealthy pregnant Chinese women coming to the US to give birth (“birth tourism”), the system is established. (US immigration authorities are taking steps to minimise birth tourism.)
While they may not have done it, Suu Kyi’s children, Alexander and Kim, have an established right to be dual citizens, of both the UK and Myanmar.
Having been married to a Briton, Suu Kyi also has a right to apply for UK citizenship.
This system is so customary that even racists in America accept it.
For Myanmar, what this means is that effectively all Rohingya are its citizens. Not only can the vast majority of Rohingya people identify their ancestors as living in the country for many, many generations, and where they of course also were born (there’s no birth tourism to Bangladesh), there has been almost no cross-border movement into this area of Myanmar in recent decades. With the modern repression of the Rohingya that began in 1978, and which was then written into a dictatorship law in 1982, almost no one has attempted to migrate into the country across its southwest border. This means that an extraordinarily high number of Rohingya, 99 per cent or even more, were born in Myanmar and are therefore unquestionably its legal citizens, racist Burman law notwithstanding.
Every single one of the Rohingya who have had to flee is rightfully a citizen of Myanmar. There is no rational dispute about this. That the Burman and other racists of the country label them illegal immigrants is just a rhetorical step to justify persecution which has now reached the level of genocide.
What this also means is that all the Rohingya who have had to flee in prior decades, including the over 200,000 in 1978, should have the right of return.
Roland Watson
(www.dictatorwatch.org)
