I. Identity Documents and Genocide: Case Studies 50 All three cases, but especially in the case of Rwanda and Myanmar, share the metaphor of “invasion,” which will continue to bedevil constructive efforts to find a sustainable solution to the protracted Rohingya crisis. During the post-colonial period, Hutu extremists succeeded in portraying Tutsi as alien settlers who placed native Hutu under their illegitimate control.176 The narrative uncritically reproduced the prejudices established by the Belgian colonialists.177 The conflict-induced forced migration and subsequent returns of large numbers of Tutsi at repeated points after the country’s independence further reinforced popular Hutu perceptions that only the Hutu were the true “sons and daughters of the soil.”178 Consequently, in the eyes of Hutu extremists and their supporters, the 1994 genocide was necessary to “clear [the country] of a threatening alien presence.”179 For these reasons, some experts argue that the genocide was not an ethnic one, but rather an act of “racial cleansing” on the grounds that Hutu perpetrators perceived Tutsi as “colonial settlers.”180 Similarly, the refusal by Myanmar’s government to recognize the Rohingya as an “indigenous race,” the substantial body of discriminatory laws and policies targeting Rohingya, as well as extensive hate speech against Rohingya, all serve to frame Rohingya as “illegal Bengali immigrants” that should be violently forced back to Bangladesh. In particular, popular fear of religious and demographic “invasion” through large-scale immigration of Muslims from Bangladesh and the alleged high reproductive rate among Rohingya inside Myanmar, reinforce the widely shared belief that Rohingya are “aliens” who do not deserve state protections, much less citizenship rights.181 For example, public approval for the 2016 and 2017 clearance operations was, anecdotally at least, extremely widespread as were denials that mass atrocities against Rohingya actually occurred, a claim attributed to “false stories” published in the international media.182 Finally, and most broadly, as all three cases make clear, identification cards and other forms of official documentation that “force a person to be affiliated with a governmentally-defined group and expose persons to profiling and human rights abuses based upon their group identity” can play an instrumental role in the genocidal process.183 Such classifications promote, according to one typology: deindividualization (societal polarization), dehumanization (institutional polarization), and demonization (eliminationist polarization).184 While the details of each form of polarization vary by context, as the three case studies show, it is clear that identification documents make it bureaucratically easier to identify, persecute, and kill targeted populations on a widespread, systematic, and massive scale. Genocide by attrition, which facilitates these outcomes through “indirect methods of destruction,” must consequently be taken seriously as part of the effort to understand past genocides and to prevent future ones.185 176 Magnarella, “Explaining Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide,” Human Rights & Human Welfare, p. 28. 177 Id. at 25. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid. For extended discussion, see, Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers. 181 Nyi Nyi Kyaw, “Islamophobia in Buddhist Myanmar: The 969 Movement and Anti-Muslim Violence,” Islam and the State in Myanmar: Muslim-Buddhist Relations and the Politics of Belonging, ed. Melissa Crouch, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 194, 195. 182 Congressional Research Service, “Burma’s Brutal Campaign Against Rohingya,” 2017, p. 3. 183 Prevent Genocide International, “Group Classification on National ID Cards as a Factor in Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing,” p. 1. 184 Id. at pp. 4-5. 185 Sheri P. Rosenburg, “Genocide Is a Process, Not an Event,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2012, p. 18.