Brutal Myanmar regime rejects UN call for Rohingya citizenship

Myanmar has rejected a UN resolution urging the government to grant citizenship to the country’s Rohingya Muslims and to put an end to Buddhist violence against the highly-persecuted minority.

Presidential spokesman, Ye Htut, said on Thursday that the United Nations could not pressure Myanmar into changing its stance over the citizenship issue.

“We cannot give citizenship rights to those who are not in accord with the law, whatever the pressure. That is our sovereign right,” he said in a post on his Facebook page, which he often uses to issue official remarks.

On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Committee expressed serious concern over communal violence and other abuses of the Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine state. The 193-nation committee also called on the Myanmar government to give the stateless Rohingya minority equal access to citizenship.

Myanmar argues that the Rohingya are illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

Ye Htut stressed that the government “totally” refutes the use of word Rohingya, insisting that only “Bengalis in Rakhine State who are in accord with 1982 citizenship law will get citizenship.”

The Southeast Asian country passed a citizenship law in 1982, under which minorities must prove they lived in Myanmar prior to 1823 to obtain nationality. The law recognizes eight races and 130 minority groups, but effectively denies some 800,000 Rohingya Muslims the right to citizenship.

Rohingya Muslims have been suffering torture, discrimination, and repression for many years. Hundreds of them are believed to have been killed and thousands displaced in attacks by Buddhist extremists.

The extremists frequently attack the Rohingya Muslims and set fire to their homes in several villages in Rakhine. Myanmar Army forces allegedly provide them with petrol for torching the houses of Muslim villagers, who are then forced to flee.

Violence against Muslims in Myanmar has been spearheaded by radical Buddhist monks who see the presence of a Muslim population as a threat, while the government is also accused of failing to protect the Muslims.

The deadly violence against the Rohingya has raised international concern and drawn condemnation of the government’s handling of the minority, which the UN describes as among the world’s most persecuted.