158 Looking Beyond Invisibility consulting the population of Myanmar and often did not bare much relation to the ways in which groups on the ground self-identified.10 Rohingya were not included as a group in this list, despite having been recognized as a national ethnic group in various other ways by the Myanmar State prior to this time.11 The 1982 Citizenship Law, then, effectively changed the criteria for citizenship from a combination of ethnic origin and long-term residency to being based almost solely on ethnic origin.12 The law had been drafted and enacted following the failed mass expulsion of approximately 200,000–230,000 Rohingya in 1978–1979. Myanmar was forced to take the vast majority back due to international pressure.13 The timing of the law, combined with the reported confiscation, removal, and destruction of Rohingyas’ documents immediately prior to the expulsions and on return, strongly suggests targeted attempts to denationalize Rohingya as part of a broader bureaucratic cleansing process.14 Recently, legal scholarship on Rohingya statelessness has shifted its focus away from the content of the 1982 Citizenship Law alone and onto state practices that occurred both inside and outside of domestic law and policy. The studies note that practices relating to documentation of Rohingya effectively prevented them from accessing citizenship. As former citizens of Burma, Rohingyas’ should still be entitled to citizenship.15 The International Fact-Finding Mission Report further shifted emphasis from the content of the Citizenship Law to state practices of seizing, removing and not issuing identity documents that occurred both before and since the enactment of the Citizenship Law.16 The report noted how the arbitrary implementation of the law violated domestic law, international human rights law, and the principles of the rule of law and legal certainty.17 It also emphasized that the law engendered discrimination and prejudice at the societal level and recommended an overhaul of Myanmar’s citizenship law,18 while further noting that recent attempts to document Rohingya under the nationality verification process have run in tandem with state violence that they conclude may amount to crimes against humanity and genocide.19 The study of Rohingya encounters with identity and state-issued documents can provide insights into how they understand and experience the nature of the state and the law in Myanmar, as well as the meanings they attach to citizenship beyond the documents that recognize it. The study also enables researchers to understand the forms and acts of resistance, collaboration, and negotiation in which Rohingya take part. Lastly, it provides a lens to explore the agency of Rohingya and to draw on their own analyses and lived experiences to gain a greater understanding and better interpretation of the historic events relating to the production of Rohingya statelessness. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 For example, see: Thomas Manch, ‘For Muslims across Myanmar, citizenship rights a legal fiction’ Frontier Myanmar (29 December 2017) <https://frontiermyanmar.net/en/for-muslims-across-myanmar-citizenship-rights-a-legal-fiction> accessed on 24 January 2019. Brigardier Aung Gyi, ‘The future of May Yu’ (Address at the ceremony of the Mujahadin surrender, 15 November 1961) The Burmese language transcript is available in, “Special Issue on May Yu”, Current Affairs (or Khit Yay), Ministry of Defense, the Union of Burma, 12, 6 (July 18, 1961)”. This speech mentions Rohingya as an ethnic group of Myanmar who should have equal rights as citizens of Myanmar. United Nations Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar’ (Document A/HRC/39/CRP.2, released September 2018). Section 473 of this report states that ‘[b]oth Prime Minister U Nu, and Sao Shwe Thaike, the country’s first President, are reported to have referred to Rohingya as an indigenous group of Myanmar, with U Nu referring to Rohingya by name in a 1954 radio address, as “… our nationals, our brethren.”’ Based on a comparison of Burma Citizenship Law (n 7), and the Burma Citizenship Act 1948 available at: The Union Citizenship Act, 1948 (as amended up to 1 December 1960) <http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/UNION_CITIZENSHIP_ACT-1948.htm>. Jeff Crisp, ‘“Primitive people”: the untold story of the UNHCR’s historical engagement with Rohingya refugees’ (2018) 73 Humanitarian Exchange <https://odihpn.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/HE-73_web.pdf> accessed on 14 January 2019; C R Abrar, ‘Repatriation of Rohingya Refugees’, UNHCR’s Regional Consultation on Refugee and Migratory Movements, Colombo, UNHCR 1995.available at: http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs/Abrar-repatriation.htm accessed on 11 May 2019. ‘Bureaucratic ethnic cleansing’ is a term coined in: Robert M Hayden, ‘Imagined Communities and Real Victims: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in Yugoslavia’ (1996) 23 American Ethnologist 783. He explains that when states were unable to destroy group identities through bureaucratic means alone, they resorted to the physical removal or destruction of the group including mass expulsions and mass killings. Thus, the new ‘imagined communities’ produced ‘real victims’. Nyi Nyi Kyaw, ‘Unpacking the Presumed Statelessness of Rohingyas’ (2017) 15 Journal of Migration and Refugee Studies 269; Nick Cheesman, ‘How in Myanmar “National Races” Came to Surpass Citizenship and Exclude Rohingya’ (2017) 47 Journal of Contemporary Asia 461. United Nations Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar’ (Document A/HRC/39/CRP.2, released September 2018 110–119). ibid art 496. ibid art 497. ibid art 835.