The routine stop-and-search of vehicles to check for Rohingya passengers greatly amplified the perception of the group as a security threat. This in turn fed the narrative, made so explicit by their denial of citizenship in 1982, that they were a lesser people. The process of distinguishing them so drastically from other groups in Rakhine State, not only in a religious or ethnic sense, but now legally, criminally, would provide more robust grounds for the violence that eventually erupted in 2012.
