Myanmar’s Democratic Transition 263 The 1982 Burma Citizenship Law was passed following a census operation and brutal counterinsurgency campaign in 1978 that forced 200,000 Muslims to flee the country.2 The law created three categories of citizens: National, Associate, and Naturalized. Nationals are persons belonging to ethnic groups who settled in the country ‘as their permanent home’ from before 1823. Experts assert that because the Rohingya are not among the 135 officially recognised ethnic groups categorised under the eight national groups listed in Article 3, a Rohingya cannot qualify for citizenship as a National.3 Associate citizens are those persons who successfully apply for citizenship under a previous law from 1948. An individual and his children may apply, ‘furnishing conclusive evidence,’ for naturalized citizenship if he entered or resided in the state before 1948 and if he has not applied for citizenship under the 1948 law.4 Standards for accepting evidence as ‘conclusive’ are unclear. For all three categories, the Central Body may ‘in the interest of the State’ revoke citizenship.5 The Central Body may also revoke associate or naturalized citizenship for a range of specified acts, such as ‘showing disaffection or 2 Burma Citizenship Law 1982. 3 See IRIN, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, ‘Myanmar: Census Offers Hope to Ethnic Groups’ IRIN News (16 May 2012) <www.irinnews.org/ report/95462/myanmar-census-offers-hope-to-ethnic-groups> accessed 20 October 2013 (quoting Chris Lewa, Director of the Arakan Project); Euro-Burma Office, ‘The Rohingyas: Bengali Muslims or Arakan Rohingyas?’ (EBO Briefing Paper No. 2, 26 March 2009) 3. Article 3 of the Burma Citizenship Law provides that ‘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. are Burma citizens.’ Article 4 further provides that ‘The Council of State may decide whether any ethnic group is national or not.’ The Rohingya are currently not listed among the 135 ethnic groups to which Articles 3 and 4 are said to apply. A question remains, however, as to the bases upon which the government determines which groups are nationals under Article 4, and how discretionary that determination is. For instance, it is unclear whether the Rohingya could be included in the list of recognised groups if it can be established that the community has resided in Myanmar as a permanent home since before 1823. If so, the text of the law itself does not explicitly or necessarily exclude the Rohingya from citizenship on the basis of nationality. Rather, the manner in which these provisions have been interpreted and applied has contributed to the group’s statelessness. 4 Burma Citizenship Law 1982, Art. 42. 5 Ibid Art. 8. An exception is a ‘citizen by birth,’ though how this category is different from a national is unclear. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 261-275