Genocide by Attrition 45 that their ancestors had permanently settled within the territory of the Union prior to 1823.124 Successful applicants received a National Registration Card (NRC) granting de facto citizenship.125 After General Ne Win overthrew the democratic administration of U Nu in 1962, marking the beginning of 26 years of military rule in Myanmar, the military instituted a series of xenophobic policies.126 These policies made it increasingly difficult for Rohingya to obtain NRCs, even when meeting the requirements.127 During the mid-1970s, the military government began issuing Foreign Registration Cards to some Rohingya under the Emergency Immigration Act, which categorized them as “resident foreigners” without citizenship rights.128 These policies served as a prelude to operation Naga Min—“Dragon King” in English—in 1977, during which the military set about identifying and registering residents as either citizens or foreigners.129 Later the operation devolved into violent attacks on Rohingya and the destruction of Rohingya villages, forcing more than 200,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.130 But it was the 1982 Citizenship Law that fundamentally changed the definition of citizenship in Myanmar.131 The 1982 Citizenship Law made race the sole criteria to qualify for full citizenship rights.132 The law specifies eight “national ethnic groups” that are considered full citizens by birth and provides authority to the government to “decide whether any ethnic group is national or not.”133 The authorities have repeatedly denied that Rohingya exist, let alone acknowledge them as an official ethnic group eligible for citizenship rights.134 124 The Union Citizenship Act, 1948. See also, Nick Cheesman, “Problems with Facts about Rohingya Statelessness”, E-International Relations, December 8, 2015, https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/08/problems-with-facts-about-rohingyastatelessness/, p. 1. 125 José María Arraiza and Oliver Vonk, Report on Citizenship Law: Myanmar (San Demenico di Fiesole: European University Institute, 2017), https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/48284/RSCAS_GLOBALCIT_CR_2017_14.pdf, p. 6. 126 Sarah L. Clarke, Sung Aung Sein Myint, and Zabra Yu Siwa, Re-examining Ethnic Identity in Myanmar, May 31, 2019, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Ethnic-Identity-in-Myanmar.pdf, pp. 23-25. Furthermore, in 2022, Rohingya poet and author Mayyu Ali told Fortify Rights “[G]enocide is not just about the method of killing. The Myanmar government first targeted our culture and language. In 1964, Burmese dictator U Ne Win [banned] the Rohingya language [on] radio broadcast, and he launched operations against my people. Every operation resulted in the exodus.” See, Fortify Rights, “A Rohingya Poet Transforms Pain into Power,” April 5, 2022, https://www. fortifyrights.org/mya-inv-pro-2022-03-05/. 127 Fortify Rights, “Tools of Genocide,” p. 34. 128 UNHCR, Citizenship and Statelessness Myanmar: An Analysis of International Standards and the Myanmar Citizenship Legal Framework, 2017. See also, Shehmin Awan, “The Statelessness Problem of Rohingya Muslims,” Washington University Global Studies Law Review, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2020, pp. 85-110. 129 William L. Scully and Frank N. Trager, “Burma 1978: The Thirtieth Year of Independence,” Asian Survey, Vol. 19, No. 2, February 1979, pp. 147-156. 130 In Rakhine State, Naga Min reportedly degenerated into violent attacks on Rohingya by both the Myanmar army and local civilian perpetrators. See, Human Rights Watch, Burma: The Rohingya Muslims, 1996, p. 11, 12. Bertil Lintner, “Diversionary Tactics: Anti-Muslim Campaign Seen as Effort to Rally Burmans,” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 29, 1991. The feature-length documentary film, “The Venerable W.,” directed by Barbet Schroeder, includes rare historical footage of Rohingya survivors of Naga Min in Bangladesh. Barbet Schroeder, “The Venerable W.,” Les Films du Losange et al., 2017. 131 Nick Cheesman, “How in Myanmar ‘National Races’ Came to Surpass Citizenship and Exclude Rohingya,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2017, pp. 461-483. 132 Burma Citizenship Law, Pyithu Hluttaw Law No. 4, October 15, 1982. The 1982 Citizenship Law created three levels of citizenship: citizen, associate citizenship, and naturalized. None of these citizenship levels are applicable to Rohingya. Fortify Rights, “Tools of Genocide,” pp. 37-38. 133 The 1982 Citizenship Law provides that citizens are: “Nationals such as the Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin, Burman, Mon, Rakhine or Shan and ethnic groups as have settled in any of the territories included within the State as their permanent home from a period anterior to 1185 B.E., 1823 A.D.” Burma Citizenship Law, Art. 4. 134 Jane Ferguson, “Who’s Counting? Ethnicity, Belonging, and the National Census in Burma/Myanmar,” Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Southeast Asia, Vol. 171, No. 1, 2015, pp. 1-28. Furthermore, the denial of citizenship to Rohingya after 1982 was a key mechanism used to institutionalize the belief that Rohingya were outsiders, and it was accompanied by popular discourses that drew on references to Rohingya as “Bengali” and that saw “Rohingya” as a fabricated identity. For example, in 2012, a series of violent incidents between Buddhist and Muslim residents in Rakhine State escalated into state-sanctioned, coordinated attacks on Rohingya and other Muslims in Rakhine State. Following the 2012 violence between Rakhine and Rohingya in western Myanmar, a group by the name of “Group of Wuntharnu Ethnic Peoples” circulated a statement warning that international aid groups that had assisted