45 “The authorities [in Myanmar] refuse to allow participants to self-identify as Rohingya on these identity cards.”99 For example, a 30-year-old Rohingya village leader from Maungdaw Township who saw the NVC application form many times said: “On the NVC form it asked, ‘Where are you from? What border did you enter? How did you come to Myanmar?’ We are not migrants. The document that you have to fill out for the NVC makes us feel shame. It says we are outsiders.”100 The application form also includes questions such as, “[d]ate and place of arrival in Myanmar,” “[t]ype of vehicles and route taken (to Myanmar),” “[r]ace (ethnicity) and citizenship (nationality),” and other biographic details, indicating that the NVC is intended for foreigners, not members of a community indigenous to Myanmar.101 Several Rohingya said that previous government-issued identity documents and documents held by their ancestors specified their legal status in Myanmar as “full citizens.”102 A 45-year-old Rohingya refugee woman from Buthidaung Township, who refused to exchange her White Card receipt for an NVC, told Fortify Rights: The NVC is another policy of our government to persecute us in a new way. It’s like many of the old polices and old cards that didn’t give us benefits . . . The NVC is for [foreigners] not for Rohingya. I had a three-fold card [NRC citizenship card]. [The Myanmar government] then gave me a White Card, and after, the [Myanmar government] replaced it with a White Card receipt. I don’t need a new card.103 Another Rohingya woman told Fortify Rights: The NVC is for guests. We are native people in Myanmar . . . My parents had three-fold [NRC citizenship card] cards. When I was born, I held a White Card, then [the government] replaced it with a receipt paper. My receipt paper, including [household] family list, were burned when the army forces set fire to my house during the violence in August 2017.104 A displaced Rohingya woman, 26, from Buthidaung Township, who fled to Bangladesh after military-led attacks in 2017, explained how the NVC process is complicating the situation for refugees in Bangladesh: “We don’t trust Myanmar . . . Our forefathers were verified citizens in Myanmar. My grandfather was a police officer in Maungdaw [in northern Rakhine State]. I will not return unless we have rights and are granted citizenship.”105 An internal UNCHR document from April 2016 further explained that, “communities are reluctant to accept them [the NVC]” because the “legal status, rights and citizenship verification” attached to the NVC are “unclear.”106 As of August 2017, the Government of Myanmar had issued an estimated 10,000 NVCs in Rakhine State and recognized as citizens or naturalized citizens only 4,000—less than 0.5 percent—of the estimated one million Rohingya people in Rakhine State at the time.107 They are already citizens.” See, Fortify Rights interview with A.W.C., undisclosed location, April 5, 2019. See also, Human Rights Council, Report of the Detailed Findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, para. 484. 99 Burma Human Rights Network, National Verification Cards: A Barrier to Rohingya Repatriation, July 2019, p. 10, http:// www.bhrn.org.uk/en/report/1090-national-verification-cards-a-barrier-to-rohingya-repatriation-full-report.html (accessed August 23, 2019). 100 Fortify Rights interview with F.G., Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh, June 17, 2019. See, Annex II: National Verification Card (NVC) Application Form. 101 Annex II: National Verification Card (NVC) Application Form (unnoficial translation). 102 The authorities have conducted annual household surveys of Rohingya households in northern Rakhine State since the 1990s. See the textbox “Household-Lists and Annual Surveys” in this report. 103 Fortify Rights interview with I.K., Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh August 14, 2019. 104 Fortify Rights interview with I.A., Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh August 14, 2019. 105 Fortify Rights interview with H.C., Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh, August 7, 2019. See also, Ibrahim, “Myanmar Wants to Track Rohingya, Not Help Them,” Foreign Policy. 106 UNHCR, Movement Restrictions for Stateless Residents in Rakhine State, Myanmar, internal report, April 2016, on file with Fortify Rights. 107 Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, Towards a Peaceful, Fair, and Prosperous Future, p. 29.