The Debate | Opinion | Southeast Asia

Myanmar’s Leaders Tried to Erase My Rohingya Identity 11 Years Ago

The repression of Rohingya identity is connected to Myanmar’s broader failure to establish an inclusive political order. It’s time for ASEAN to realize that.

In July 2015, I was invited to the residence of U Aung Thaung, a senior and influential leader of Myanmar’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), in Naypyidaw. We discussed the approaching general elections and parliamentary nominations for the constituencies in northern Rakhine state.

What happened during that meeting has remained outside the public record for more than 11 years. I want to disclose it now because the political question at its center – the recognition of Rohingya identity and rights – remains unresolved. It is also relevant to how ASEAN engages with Myanmar’s military leadership today.

I was elected to Myanmar’s house of parliament, the Pyithu Hluttaw, from Buthitaung township of Rakhine state in November 2010 as a USDP candidate. In the summer of 2015 I was preparing to secure my office for another term. But, during our private conversation, U Aung Thaung proposed a condition that went far beyond ordinary electoral politics.

As I recall it, he told me that he, the USDP leadership, President U Thein Sein, and then Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing did not accept “Rohingya” as an ethnic identity. He urged me to stop advocating for that identity and to persuade my constituents to identify themselves as “Bengali” instead. He presented this change as a pathway toward obtaining citizenship documentation and restoring political participation. He also advised me to give a media interview stating that “there is no Rohingya but Bengali,” without mentioning our private meeting and his name.

My parliamentary nomination, he indicated, depended on my willingness to support that position.

I could not ask my constituents to surrender their identity in exchange for the possibility of receiving documents, voting rights, or another parliamentary term. Political representation should protect the rights of a community, not become an instrument for bargaining those rights away.

U Aung Thaung encouraged me to consult my constituents and reconsider. I subsequently informed community leaders and constituents about the conversation. They supported my position and we were all on the same page. I did not disclose the meeting to the media at that time because of the political consequences of making such an account public while living in Myanmar.

During my visit, I saw large portraits of President Thein Sein, Min Aung Hlaing, and nationalist Buddhist monk U Wirathu in an office at the residence. An assistant told me that the office also served U Wirathu whenever he comes to Naypyidaw. These are my recollections of what I saw and I was told 11 years ago.

The statements about Thein Sein and Min Aung Hlaing were made to me by U Aung Thaung. I cannot claim that I heard either man personally authorize the proposal. But U Aung Thaung confirmed the proposal with Union Immigration Minister U Khin Yi, today’s USDP chairman and speaker of Pyithu Hluttaw, over the phone in front of me.

The central proposition was unmistakable: I was being asked to abandon public advocacy for the identity of the people I represented as a condition of continuing my political career.

On August 4, 2015, I resigned from the USDP. Two days later, I applied to contest the upcoming Pyithu Hluttaw election as an independent candidate for Buthitaung.

On August 22, the Maungdaw District Election Subcommission rejected my candidacy. Its decision concluded that my parents had not been Myanmar citizens at the time of my birth in 1965. I appealed, together with concrete documents, to the Rakhine State Election Subcommission, which upheld the rejection on September 1, 2015. The Union Election Commission subsequently affirmed the decision, communicating its ruling in a letter dated September 6, 2015.

This outcome presented a profound contradiction in my political life.

The same Union Election Commission had formally recognized me as an elected member of parliament following the November 7, 2010 election. Its recognition certificate, dated January 10, 2011, identified me as the elected representative of Buthitaung and recorded my citizenship card.

Five years later, election authorities found me ineligible to stand for the same parliamentary seat because they now considered the evidence of my parents’ citizenship insufficient.

The State Election Subcommission acknowledged that my father possessed a national........

© The Diplomat