ARBITRARY DEPRIVATION OF NATIONALITY AT THE ROOT OF THE STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION ENDURED BY THE ROHINGYA. “ Our citizenship has been stolen from us. Rohingya statelessness is not an accident of history, it was deliberately produced by the Myanmar military as a part of the ongoing genocide. Rohingya are an ethnic community belonging to Rakhine State Myanmar, whose histories in Rakhine, now on the borderlands of Myanmar, by far pre-date modern nationstates and borders. The arbitrary deprivation of nationality by Myanmar, which was initiated under military rule, is a key element in the decades-long persecution of Rohingya. The genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar and their lack of protection as refugees outside Myanmar are strongly linked to Myanmar’s systematic production of Rohingya statelessness. Research conducted over decades, indicates that Myanmar’s imposed statelessness on the Rohingya, and serious related restrictions on a range of fundamental human rights including freedom of movement, right to work, access to education, right to marry and have children, was part of a wider strategy aimed at “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” (Article 11 of the Genocide Convention). Myanmar’s 1982 ethno-centric and exclusionary Citizenship Law, together with the arbitrary implementation of citizenship rules, provided a domestic framework that sanctioned discrimination, persecution and expulsion. The clear exclusion of Rohingya from access to citizenship by right - as opposed to a highly discretionary and arbitrary naturalisation procedure - was a deliberate next step towards the ratcheting up of abuses against the group. Denial of citizenship - and importantly, the group claim to citizenship by right reinforced state narratives that Rohingya were foreigners – ‘illegal immigrants’ – unworthy of state protection. This in turn, reinforced narratives which undermined the very identity of the Rohingya as a group belonging to the region. Powerful voices dictated that ‘there is no ethnic group called Rohingya’ and ‘they are Bengali’, contributing to the stripping of identity, dignity and rights of the group. 2 2 A full list of contributors is included at end of this paper. NAY SAN LWIN1 There are now over a million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in other countries such as Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, India, Thailand etc. With Myanmar deeply divided along ethno-religious and political lines, a discriminatory and arbitrary Citizenship Law, and an international community that has historically failed the Rohingya, there is much work to be done to heal open wounds, demand justice and accountability, and secure the structural change that is a necessary prerequisite to dignity and peace for Rohingya communities. The COVID-19 impact Already at crisis point before the pandemic, the human rights of the Rohingya in Myanmar and those in refugee situations have further deteriorated. In Myanmar, the Government has exploited the pandemic situation to further discriminate against minorities; violence and human rights violations continue but have received less international attention with COVID-19 dominating news cycles. In refugee situations in Bangladesh, Malaysia and India, limited access to healthcare and public health information, sanitation, decent housing and humanitarian aid have combined with severely limited livelihood opportunities. These factors have exacerbated the vulnerabilities of Rohingya. Border and immigration controls, tightened in response to the pandemic, have resulted in boatloads of Rohingya seeking refuge being pushed back into the sea. Hundreds of lives have been lost. Undocumented Rohingya have been arrested and detained as irregular migrants, without access to refugee determination procedures. They remain in overcrowded facilities further compounding the risk of COVID-19. Meanwhile, xenophobic attacks and hate speech against Rohingya have flooded social media, increasing discrimination and the risks of further physical violence. These issues are further explored in this Briefing Paper.