The fresh news of Arakan state in Myanmar (Burma) 31th March of 2014. News Census enumerators leave visiting the village of Barasa of Rakhine state. Myanmar has said that Muslims would not be allowed to register as Rohingya in its first census in three decades. Photo: AFP.Buddhist nationalists were seen travelling through state capital Sittwe yesterday, proclaiming by loud hailer that their planned boycott of the survey had been called off after they received written assurances that the term Rohingya was illegal. But Muslims in the bleak displacement camps on the outskirts of Sittwe, many made homeless in two waves of bloodshed in 2012, expressed determination to defy the governments edict to register as Bengali. I was born here and my parents were also born here. I was born a Myanmar national. For me, I will not register as Bengali, I will register as Rohingya, Hla Myint, 58, told AFP. Humanitarian workers in the region have come under increasing pressure from Buddhist nationalists who accuse them of bias in favour of local Muslims. Foreign aid workers fled Rakhine after Buddhist mobs attacked their offices as tensions escalated in the run-up to the census. The United Nations is pulling some 50 international and Myanmar staff from the region, while other major humanitarian groups are also removing their workers temporarily.With tensions running high, the British Embassy in Yangon issued a statement registering its concern that the option on the census form for respondents to self-identify... may not be met. It is importanttt that the government put in place the conditions to allow everyone to participate in this nationwide census in a fair manner and free from intimidation, the statement added.Backed by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the census is aimed at plugging an information deficit in the former military dictatorship. Critics, who have called for the exercise to be postponed, accuse the organisers of focusing on the technical aspects of the survey and neglecting political concerns. Myanmar is roughly the size of France with many people living in remote jungles and mountains with barely any infrastructure.Minority groups make up some 30 percent of the estimated 55 to 60 million population. This plurality has long been a source of conflict, with the former junta using the many civil conflicts that sprang up at the end of British colonial rule in 1948 as a pretext for their hardline rule. Rakhine state isnt the only trouble spot for census takers. Several minority groups have expressed misgivings about the use of a controversial list of 135 official ethnicities in the census, fearing it could be used for political purposes.UNFPA has run into criticism over the census. In February, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based non-profit organisation, warned that at this stage in Myanmars transition from military rule, “a poorly timed census that enters into controversial areas of ethnicity and in an ill-conceived way will further complicate the situation. ”Critics said the UNFPA, as the main donor liaison to the Myanmar government, has focused too narrowly on technical issues and ignored the political dynamics. They argued that the census should be delayed, or the more controversial questions, like ethnicity and income level,
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 15:05:49 +0000
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