Myanmar's Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim 'Other' (Asian Arguments)

by Francis Wade

But because the group was absent from the list of 135 groups, so its members would be absented from the nation. In 1989, as their security grew increasingly imperilled, immigration officers went among Rohingya communities in Rakhine State demanding they turn in the Foreign Registration Cards they too had been given in the mid-1970s and await a new Citizenship Scrutiny Card. But those who still argued for a Rohingya identity, or who the government considered to be in the country illegally, were not given ID cards, and were refused re-registration. From that point on, the legal status of anyone who subscribed to the Rohingya identity began to crumble.