Summary 10 Implemented under the Aung San Suu Kyi government, the NVC process requires Rohingya to register as “Bengali” or another foreign identity, relegating Rohingya to the status of “foreigner,” denying them access to full citizenship and contributing to their administrative erasure. “On the NVC form it asked, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Which border did you enter?’ ‘How did you come to Myanmar?’,” a 30-year-old Rohingya man from Maungdaw Township in Myanmar’s Rakhine State told Fortify Rights. “We are not migrants. The document that you have to fill out for the NVC makes us feel shame. It says we are outsiders.” This report is based on 628 interviews from 2014 to 2019 conducted by Fortify Rights, including with 304 Rohingya women, in Rakhine State, Myanmar; Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Fortify Rights interviewed eyewitnesses and survivors of human rights violations in Myanmar as well as members of civil society organizations and humanitarian aid workers. “The NVC is a tool of genocide,” a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh told Fortify Rights in English, later adding, “We want our citizenship restored first, and there should be equality, safety, and security in our motherland.” NATIONAL VERIFICATION CARDS, HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, AND ATROCITY CRIMES The Myanmar government has used the NVC process to violate the rights of Rohingya, and the process itself has resulted in human rights violations. “I was beaten everywhere— my head, back, chest, and all over my body,” a Rohingya farmer, 62, told Fortify Rights, describing beatings by Myanmar authorities. The same authorities threatened the man to accept an NVC, saying, “‘If you don’t accept the NVC, we will kill you.’” In another instance, on July 17, 2017, Myanmar Army soldiers and government officials entered Baw Tu Lar village—also known as Bandola village—in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw Township and forced groups of Rohingya to accept NVCs, in some cases at gunpoint. “[The soldiers] closed the door and surrounded us, holding guns,” a Rohingya man, 61, told Fortify Rights. Myanmar authorities forced him and four of his seven family members to accept the NVC. “They separated men and women . . . The threats to receive an NVC are real. It’s a horrible situation for us.” Just weeks later, in August 2017, the Myanmar military began attacking civilians in northern Rakhine State, forcing at least some Rohingya residents of Baw Tu Lar village to flee to Bangladesh. Beginning in October 2016 and August 2017—in response to Rohingya militant attacks on police—Myanmar security forces and civilian perpetrators razed several hundred Rohingya villages and committed massacres and mass rape of Rohingya women, men, and children throughout northern Rakhine State, forcing nearly 800,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. In July 2018, Fortify Rights exposed how Myanmar authorities made “extensive and systematic preparations” for the attacks against Rohingya and that the crimes constituted genocide and crimes against humanity.