The Roaming Rohingya: Stateless and Suffering in Myanmar

DEVELOPMENTS

After meeting this May with Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel laureate Burmese democracy icon, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell said that Myanmar's upcoming elections, if held under the 2008 constitution, would lack international legitimacy. Under this revised constitution, the military junta in Myanmar would be replaced by a civilian government, including a 440-member legislature of which 25 percent of seats will be reserved for the military. The constitutional revisions prompted some cabinet members in the junta to resign from the military and transform themselves into civilians in order to qualify for a larger proportion of seats.

The junta's control has systematically disallowed social reforms to take place, continuously denying minority communities the basic civil liberties and rights necessary to sustain their daily lives. Political struggles and armed conflicts between the military regime and political opponents such as the National League for Democracy have left nearly 3.5 million people in Myanmar stateless without access to public services or a legal claim to basic freedoms and civil and political rights.

One of the world's most persecuted minorities according to the U.N., the Rohingya people comprise an Islamic community in the North Arakan region of Myanmar that has been subject to discriminatory practices and denied basic rights, such as the rights to free movement or marriage, as well as the rights to access to medical services, food or housing.

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