Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya is a long-standing issue, not a recent or isolated one, stemming from decades of systematic discrimination, state-sponsored marginalization, and planned violence. For centuries, the Rohingya Muslim minority (also testified by our testimonies of the respondents) has called Rakhine State home, yet the Myanmar state has worked against their existence. Following Myanmar’s independence from British colonial rule in 1948, the newly formed civilian government initially recognized the Rohingya as equal citizens through the 1948 Citizenship Act. However, this brief window of legal recognition got immediately closed with the rise of military rule. From 1962 to 2010, the military junta imposed a repressive regime that gradually stripped the Rohingya of their rights and identity. They were denied citizenship, excluded from state institutions, and subjected to arbitrary arrest, and forced labor. The Rohingya were increasingly marginalized due to indifferent laws. The turning point came in 1982, when General Ne Win’s military regime passed a new citizenship law that redefined nationality on the basis of race and ethnicity. The law omitted the Rohingya from the list of ‘135 recognized national races’ effectively rendering them stateless in their own homeland. This act of legal disenfranchisement laid the foundation for further marginalization. The Rohingya were now officially labeled as “foreigners” or “Bengali immigrants,” despite their claims that they have deep historical and cultural ties to Arakan. General Ne Win justified the law by claiming, “the foreigners who had settled in Burma at the time of independence have become a problem, so we made this law to solve the problem.” The law institutionalized their exclusion and enabled security forces to terrorize the community under the guise of citizenship verification campaigns. Rohingya identity documents were altered or revoked, and the government ceased to recognize the term “Rohingya,” replacing it with “Bengali.” In 2015, the Myanmar government took further steps to deny the community’s existence by invalidating temporary identity cards (temporary white cards) held by Rohingya and introducing the National Verification Card (NVC) system. Under this system, individuals were forced to register as foreigners to receive basic recognition. This policy further reinforced their statelessness and made them prime targets for discrimination and violence. In the same year, the voting rights of the community were also taken away. 7