Protest over Myanmar Rohingya Vote Rights
Dozens of protesters marched in Yangon Wednesday against a law giving voting rights to Myanmar's temporary citizens, including hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya, as parliament's speaker referred the fiery issue to a constitutional tribunal.
Controversy over people holding limited citizenship rights in Myanmar's complex national identification system spilled onto the streets after a bill granting them the right to vote in referendums was enacted on Tuesday.
The issue has ignited indignation among some Buddhists in restive Rakhine state, where around half a million Rohingya Muslims are estimated to hold "white cards", a temporary identification document.
"If those given the right to vote don't pay respect to Myanmar's flag, then we will have a failure of sovereignty," said Nyi Nyi Maung, a Rakhine Buddhist who had joined monks and other protesters in Yangon Wednesday.
Parliamentary speaker Shwe Mann, who is also the head of the ruling party, said he had asked the constitutional tribunal to look into the matter, adding that the law could still be amended.
"I worry that the heated public debate might disturb the integration of ethnic minorities, national reconciliation and peace," he told reporters in the capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday.
Violence between Buddhists and Muslims tore through Rakhine in 2012, leaving over 200 people dead and sparkling outbreaks of religious violence across the country, overshadowing its democratic transition.
Many of Myanmar's roughly 1.3 million Rohingya are stateless and subject to a tangle of restrictions that affect everything from their ability to travel and work to the permitted size of their families.
Referred to by the government as "Bengali", they are largely seen as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even if many can trace their ancestry in the country back for generations.
Those with white cards were able to vote in the 2010 elections, which marked the end of outright junta rule.
Rohingya MP Shwe Maung, whose constituency lies in isolated northern Rakhine, said some 1.5 million people in Myanmar were thought to hold some level of temporary citizenship.
Most of these people are in the country's many ethnic minority border regions, and around 500,000 are Rohingya.
"This is important because it is the right of a citizen to vote," he told AFP, adding that the issue had become controversial only after the 2012 violence.
The United Nations in December passed a resolution urging Myanmar to grant the Rohingya access to citizenship.
The issue was at the heart of protests against U.N. Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, which saw the country's most high-profile nationalist monk label her a "whore" in a tirade that drew international condemnation.
Source: Agence France Presse
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