The Stateless Citizen

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_ By Victor Sang Khambil (Chin Refugee Committee)

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Minority Rights

As an indigenous person or one of ethnic minority myself in Burma, I have many experiences to write. Out of 145 ethnic groups in Myanmar, I am from the Chin ethnic minority. As there are 52 millions populations in Burma, Chin people are only 500,000 which is only half a million. As we all we know that Burma is a Buddhist dominant country, any minority group with different religious other than Buddhism face many kind of discrimination. For example, if a Chin national in Burmese governmental post want to get promotion to higher authority, he/she must convert into Buddhism. In army, most of Chin nationals can only reach a rank to Captain because to get major rank or above, the military authority demanded to change Christianity, Hinduism, Muslim and others into Buddhism. Most of the Chin people (90%) are Christian and it is very difficult to change religious belief. It is very destructive and genocidal to be a minority under Burmese authority.

Even if Burmese authority verbally announced that there is no religious discrimination and no political inequalities in Burma, they just only verbally announced to outside world. It is very clear to understand and see how the military regime discriminated minority by looking at the Burmese military government who do not allow tourist to visit the hill-people lands in Burma as they are afraid that tourists will see their misdeeds against minority groups. In Burma ( Now Myanmar ) the military authority ordered to put name of ethnicity and name of religion even in national identity card and in order to directly know not only the minority groups of their identity but also religion. This is none other than discrimination. Even if we the Chin people have our own literacy, the authority ordered that no Chin can learn Chin dialectical alphabets in Chin State and also ordered that all signboards written in Chin dialect be should be written in Burmese even within Chin State.

As long as the military authority or any government in Burma use “ divide and rule” practices to lead the nation, there will never be peace and tranquility in Burma as 40% of civilians in Burma are made up of various ethnic groups. Out of 52 million populations in Burma, 40 % are indigenous people. 60 % of land belongs to Indigenous people in Burma. Since 1948 after Burma got Independent from Great Britain, no governmental authority so far has fulfilled or addressed the rights of minority in Burma. Therefore it remained unsolved as mammoth political deadlock to build a prosperous nation. The successive and unbroken rule of power by military regime since 1960 is a result of erratic system in the people parliament.

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)

Internally displaced persons are people who are forced by war, poverty, rivalries or natural calamities such as earthquake and volcanoes from their respective living areas to other places but stuck inside their own nation. As I wrote above, when brutal rulers want to assimilate ethnic groups into their own hand, they created violence in their areas and forced the inhabitants out. By systematically displacing people from their land and prolonged their sojourn in another places, people can lose their land as they have to interact and mix among others and stuck there because of deeply intermingling or intermarriage for generation to generation. In Chin State especially in rural areas, military soldiers opened fire to the sky at midnight and exploded their outdated hand-grenades near the village in order to force villagers to move out citing insurgency in their village and gathered them in a certain village. For example, they forcefully relocated six or seven villages and adjoined them where they think most strategic for them to manage best under their lawless rule within their absolute control indigenous habitats in Chinland.

Since a sudden gathering of huge number of villagers in a small place can not house them enough, many chose to get out and wandered further to further where they are internally displaced. Internal displacements cause by natural disaster is much better as they can return when the situation is good to return. However people can not return to their original habitat if they are forced by men-made disaster. Is someone is forced out of his/her own state, we consider as refugee but if still remain inside the state we consider as internally displaced person. Only connotation is different in the status of internal or external displaced person in which we could probably say IPDs and EDPs. Most internally displaced persons are ethnic minority groups since they can not react to the majority in term of material strength or physical dominance.

The world body must act in time to find out the best solution how to address the internally displaced persons since we see our world is now engaged with conflicts in middle east and racial crimes against humanity in Africa. Even if there is no such big war like world war, there are many dangerous conflicts which forced millions of innocent civilians out of their original country and left millions stuck inside their own state as internally displaced. It is more important to find out solution on how to educate victims of political atrocities than try to resettle everywhere.

Refugees

The history of refugees should have been irretraceable if the word refugee was used in the adventure of mankind. Only after United Nations Agency for Refugee was created in 1951, the word refugee surfaced in global challenge on the rights of innocent civilians. Under UNHCR Refugee Criteria, there are five measures to determine refugees under the criteria of nationality, religion, ethnicity, association with particular groups and political opinion. For example, we majority of the Chin people know that we are political refugees after the year 2000 even though our discriminated, dominated and persecuted status under the military authority since 1960s had inarguably qualified us under UNHCR Mandate as refugee. We were honestly and innocently ignorant about our status of refugee to speak out in the open but suffered and suffered under the brutal rule of military government for decades in Burma.

Even Lord Jesus was a real refugee when King Herod ordered to kill all children under 2 years of age in Judea and he was secretly taken by his parents and escaped to Egypt. If there was UNHCR office in Cairo at that time, Mary and Joseph should approach UNHCR and claim for refugee status as they were really in fear of persecution and most possibly murder by Herod if deport back to Judea. There is no nation on earth without a history of political criminalities. History can turn hero into villain and villain into hero as it depended on the defeat of political game. Political refugees and economic refugees should have been treated as persons in need of assistance. When dictator rule the nation, the state become like prison and all civilians are like prisoners. For example in North Korea, Sudan, Belarus and Burma (Myanmar), the dictators suppressed the nations and ruled without law and the nation is like undeclared battlefield where civilians are killed like rebels in the streets.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) could never handle alone the problems of refugees in the world. The most important point to get assistance for the refugees is a country where refugees first landed as helpless victims. For example, there are thousands of Burmese refugees in Thailand who will never be resettled overnight by UNHCR to third countries. The most important help can only come from the people and government of Thailand for the incoming refugees from Burma. Durable solution of UNHCR can only cover a certain level of help to smaller groups of refugees while more will still suffer with uncertain future. Give them foods in the first place and protect them from insecure elements as the second step and educate them as the third step. The policy change of their original country from where refugee fled to second nation should be most important to return home. As long as a country like Burma ( MYANMAR ) where gang of military rulers are fiercely dominating over civilians and let the uncontrolled opium-land to operate freely in the golden triangle without ASEAN mechanism on how to manage political refugees and poverty, this region could be sucked into human traffickers’ colony. We have our home. We have our state. We are citizens of Burma but we are stateless citizens in foreign lands.

As if while you are visiting another country and you are called a tourist and you still don’t lose their citizenship back home because you can return to your home, we refugee are not the lost citizens because we have our home to return. Tourists are visiting with something and they are welcomed but refugees are forced to visit with nothing and they are imprisoned.

We don’t want to be called refugee. We don’t want to be called “illegal immigrant” as if violators who committed offence. We are innocent citizens. We are just once again fallen victims to the wording on documentation to our friends. We violate no law but they violated ours to violate yours without our consent. No one is born illegal. No one is born refugee since by birth, we are all citizens of the world. We are all born legitimate to our mothers. No one is born illegitimate to his/her mother and no one is born refugee to his/her mother. We are all children of our mothers and citizens of humanity.