No changes to citizenship law: minister
Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law will not be amended, says Minister for Immigration and Population Khin Yi.
“We have never said that the 1982 Citizenship Law will be amended. Our department has not officially spoken about it. However, I have heard repeated mention of this issue since returning from my trip abroad,” said Khin Yi.
“As I have said several times before, [the Citizenship Law] was drafted after six and a half years of meetings with the people in the regions and states during the administration of the Revolutionary Council,” he said.
Human Rights groups estimate that more than 1.2 million people in Myanmar are stateless.
Khin Yi was speaking after a proposal to abolish the law was rejected by parliament.
“We will continue to use this law as it is now.
“We are not going to amend this law now and we have never said we would amend it. It was just a misunderstanding,” he said.
Khin Yi also said there were 1.33 million Muslims of Bengali origin living in Myanmar, according to latest official statistics, and most of them (1.08 million) were in Rakhine State.
Every person of Bengali origin living in Rakhine would get an official registration card if they met the criteria listed in the 1982 Citizenship Law, he said.
It would be up to the election commission to decide whether they had the right to vote in the coming election, he added.
Muslims make up more than 4 per cent of the country’s population.
