CNN :
Myanmar has stripped away temporary voting rights given to the country’s embattled Rohingya minority only a day earlier, following protests by Buddhist nationalists.
About 1.3 million Rohingya, a Muslim minority, live in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are regarded as foreign interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh, and face widespread prejudice.
Hundreds of thousands instead hold temporary identity papers known as white cards.
On Tuesday, a bill was enacted with a clause that would give white cardholders the right to vote in a proposed referendum on the country’s constitution.
The move prompted protesters, including many Buddhist monks, to take to the streets of Yangon Wednesday, demanding that the law be revoked.
“You played the white card stupidly,” read one protester’s banner.
That evening, the office of President Thein Sein issued a statement saying that the white cards would expire at the end of March,
canceling the holder’s newfound voting rights, the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
The statement said that white cardholders would have two months from the expiry of their cards on March 31 to surrender them to authorities, who would then assess their citizenship status under the country’s citizenship laws.
The president’s office also said it would establish an advisory commission to look into the question of white cards, which it noted had “been an issue among the public.”
In December, the United Nations passed a resolution urging Myanmar to give access to citizenship for the Rohingya, many of whom are subject to extreme discrimination.
Following waves of deadly communal violence in 2012, more than 100,000 people in Myanmar’s impoverished Rakhine State are trapped in squalid internment camps, which they are forbidden to leave of their own volition — officially for their own protection.
When the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kyung-wha Kang, visited Rakhine’s camps in June, she described witnessing “a level of human suffering in IDP camps that I have personally never seen before.”
Buddhist nationalists have been accused of stoking much of the anti-Rohingya sentiment, with a prominent monk recently calling a UN official a “whore” for her comments in defense of the minority.
Myanmar has stripped away temporary voting rights given to the country’s embattled Rohingya minority only a day earlier, following protests by Buddhist nationalists.
About 1.3 million Rohingya, a Muslim minority, live in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are regarded as foreign interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh, and face widespread prejudice.
Hundreds of thousands instead hold temporary identity papers known as white cards.
On Tuesday, a bill was enacted with a clause that would give white cardholders the right to vote in a proposed referendum on the country’s constitution.
The move prompted protesters, including many Buddhist monks, to take to the streets of Yangon Wednesday, demanding that the law be revoked.
“You played the white card stupidly,” read one protester’s banner.
That evening, the office of President Thein Sein issued a statement saying that the white cards would expire at the end of March,
canceling the holder’s newfound voting rights, the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
The statement said that white cardholders would have two months from the expiry of their cards on March 31 to surrender them to authorities, who would then assess their citizenship status under the country’s citizenship laws.
The president’s office also said it would establish an advisory commission to look into the question of white cards, which it noted had “been an issue among the public.”
In December, the United Nations passed a resolution urging Myanmar to give access to citizenship for the Rohingya, many of whom are subject to extreme discrimination.
Following waves of deadly communal violence in 2012, more than 100,000 people in Myanmar’s impoverished Rakhine State are trapped in squalid internment camps, which they are forbidden to leave of their own volition — officially for their own protection.
When the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kyung-wha Kang, visited Rakhine’s camps in June, she described witnessing “a level of human suffering in IDP camps that I have personally never seen before.”
Buddhist nationalists have been accused of stoking much of the anti-Rohingya sentiment, with a prominent monk recently calling a UN official a “whore” for her comments in defense of the minority.
