Genocide by Attrition 43 without full citizenship, rendering them stateless and thus with few international protections.111 Changes to different categories of identity documents since independence, combined with the union government’s decision not to enumerate Rohingya during the controversial 2014 national census, put the Rohingya in an even further precarious legal situation.112 Meanwhile, state-level laws and policies worked in an opposite, but still complementary, direction. These laws and policies carefully documented, counted, and enabled the close control of the everyday lives of Rohingya via discriminatory measures that have drastically limited their rights to movement, marriage, childbirth, state education, and employment.113 The result, according to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Myanmar—the U.N. mechanism mandated by the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate human rights violations perpetrated by the Myanmar military in Rakhine, Kachin, and northern Shan states—“was a continuing situation of severe, systemic, and institutionalized oppression from birth to death” for Rohingya.114 In recent years, the number of Rohingya in Myanmar have dropped precipitously due to the effectiveness of the Myanmar authorities’ genocidal campaign and policies of persecution against Rohingya. The estimated population of Rohingya in Myanmar, at the time of writing, is approximately 600,000.115 In contrast, before the military-led and self-described “clearance operations” in 2016 and 2017, the estimated population of Rohingya in Myanmar was approximately one to 1.3 million, with the vast majority of Rohingya concentrated in three townships—Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung— in the northern part of Rakhine State adjacent to the Bangladesh border.116 Rohingya constituted approximately 80 to 95 percent of the population in these three northern townships in Rakhine State.117 111 Maung Zarni and Alice Cowley, “The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya,” Pacific Rim & Policy Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2014, pp. 695-697. Many Rohingya reject the term “stateless,” saying they already have a “State” and are indigenous to Myanmar. For example, Mohib Ullah, who was assassinated in 2021, presented information on the situation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh during the March 2019 session of the Human Rights Council. He said in his remarks: “We are not stateless. Stop calling us that. We have a state; it is Myanmar. So, we want to go home to Myanmar with our rights and our citizenship.” See, Fortify Rights, “Bangladesh: Investigate Assassination of Rohingya Human Rights Defender Mohib Ullah,” September 29, 2021, https://www.fortifyrights.org/bgd-inv-2021-09-29/. 112 The Government of Myanmar excluded Rohingya and other marginalized ethnic minorities from the 2014 national census. The Republic of the Union of Myanmar Ministry of Immigration and Population, The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census: Rakhine State, May 2015, https://myanmar.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Rakhine%20 State%20Census%20Report%20-%20ENGLISH-3.pdf, p. 8. 113 U.N. Human Rights Council, Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, U.N. Doc. A/ HRC/39/64, September 12, 2018, Section IV, para. 20. Fortify Rights, Policies of Persecution. 114 Ibid. 115 U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Young People in Myanmar’s Rakhine State Tackle Ethnic Divisions, March 23, 2022, https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2022/3/623992014/young-people-myanmars-rakhine-state-tackleethnic-divisions.html. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, The Displaced and Stateless of Myanmar in the Asia-Pacific Region, January 2021, https://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/The%20Displaced%20and%20Stateless%20 of%20Myanmar%20in%20the%20Asia-Pacific%20Region%20-%20January%202021.pdf, p. 2. 116 The Myanmar Ministry of Immigration and Population and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) excluded Rohingya from the 2014 national census, Myanmar’s first census in 30 years. The government’s census report clarifies that “members of some communities [in Rakhine State] were not counted because they were not allowed to self-identify using a name that is not recognized by the Government.” That “name” is “Rohingya,” an ethnic identity the government rejects and claims does not exist. The government estimated that approximately 1,090,000 people were not counted in Rakhine State during the census—they were presumably Rohingya. The census cost more than US$75 million and was supported, via UNFPA, by multiple donor governments, including the U.S., U.K., and Australia. Many viewed it as a debacle for multiple reasons, not least of all the way in which it collected data on ethnicity. The authorities have yet to release ethnic data from the census. Myanmar Ministry of Immigration and Population, The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census. See, Mary P. Callahan, “Distorted, Dangerous Data? Lumyo in the 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census,” SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 32, No. 2, 2017, pp. 452-78. 117 Eleanor Albert and Lindsay Maizland, “The Rohingya Crisis,” Council on Foreign Relations, January 23, 2020, https:// www.cfr.org/backgrounder/rohingya-crisis.