According to the United Nations, today there are more than 68.5 million displaced people, including more than 25 million refugees. We cannot turn our backs on these, as one of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Facing the loss of their homes, families, and livelihoods, refugees look to the United States for a fighting chance at life. To restrict their entrance is to abandon the victims of global crises – crises that often the global community has failed to prevent.

We, the young people of STAND, continue to support the fight against anti-refugee actions taken by the United States. A country with such great wealth, potential impact,  and history of humanitarian assistance, has a moral obligation to do their part and accept refugees from around the globe.

As always, we stand #WithRefugees.

Statelessness can occur for a myriad of reasons. The United States State Department addresses that some statelessness is caused by naturalization laws, such as laws denying people the ability to obtain citizenship, laws denying a mother the ability to extend her nationality to her child, and laws denying citizenship for children born out of wedlock. Additionally, statelessness can be a result of paperwork mistakes, such as a hospital failing to register a birth or the loss or destruction of documents. While each case is a troubling scenario, the worst is when people are stripped of their citizenship by their nation for belonging to a certain racial or ethnic group. This action destroys the promised protection of individuals, thereby making them vulnerable to atrocities.

When citizen groups – most often minorities – are stripped of their rights and nationality, they become easy targets for persecution. Arguably the most famous case of this action was during the rule of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum asserts that when the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, the Jewish population in Germany lost all of their basic rights. These laws were an early, yet catastrophic, sign of the coming Holocaust, and the abuses Germany’s Jewish population experienced escalated sizably thereafter. Now, in Burma, 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims are considered stateless after the government rescinded their citizenship in 1982. The international community has called the Rohingya “the most persecuted minority in the world,” and a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” The aspect of being stateless makes their persecution much easier.

If nations around the world recognized and acted on the problems stateless individuals are forced to deal with, cases like the Holocaust and the persecution of the Rohingya could be minimized or even stopped earlier. Stateless people are not offered the protections of average citizens. As a result, attacking these minorities is relatively easy. For this reason, the United Nations has launched a campaign to end statelessness in ten years. Ultimately, the most difficult aspects of ending statelessness are that it must be a priority of each individual country, and that the true number of stateless people is difficult to ascertain because they are often not included in censuses or they prefer not to report that they are stateless because of the harm that could come from it. Whether the desired conclusion is probable or not, it is definitely a positive movement to combat the genocide and mass atrocities that can result from the denial of citizenship.

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Zachary Gossett is a member of the Communications Task Force for STAND. He is a first-year student at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he is studying political science. He is passionate about protecting the rights of people of the world.  

The Rohingya are a stateless ethnic group living on the west coast of Burma and east Bangladesh. They are described by the United Nations as one of the world’s most persecuted and unwanted peoples, for the Rohingya have been denied citizenship and other rights by both Burma and Bangladesh for decades. Last June, tensions boiled over between the mostly Muslim Rohingya and mostly Buddhist Rakhine in Burma’s Rakhine State. The violence continues to this day. Over 110,000 people have been displaced, thousands of homes destroyed, and hundreds killed.

Who are the Rohingya and where are they from?

There are an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya people in the world today, a majority of whom live in Burma, with other large populations in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Formerly known as the Arakanese, the Rohingya have lived in what is now Rakhine State for over 500 years. The Rohingya, formerly a separate, self-governing group, were conquered by the Burmese in the 1780s, then ruled as a colony by the British, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and finally ruled by Burma’s military junta.

What sorts of abuse are being committed against the Rohingya?

The Rohingyas’ very existence is currently subject to great controversy within Burma and Bangladesh. The Myanmar government believes the Rohingya are illegal migrants and refers to them only as “Bengalis”. The 1982 Citizenship Law was a measure passed during Burma’s military dictatorship and denies Rohingya citizenship on the basis that they are foreigners, despite many having lived in Burma for generations. Bangladesh reluctantly allows Rohingya to live in camps near the border with Burma, but denies them any government help. There have also been reports of Bangladeshi authorities turning back boats carrying Rohingya fleeing recent violence in Rakhine State.

In addition to being denied citizenship, the Rohingya are not allowed to travel or marry without permission, and are forbidden to own land or have more than two children by the Myanmar government. They are frequently subjected to land confiscations, arbitrary taxes, forced evictions, and police brutality. It is also common for the Rohingya, as well as other minority ethnic groups in Burma, to be used as forced laborers as porters of the military or construction workers. They are denied access to public resources in both Burma and Bangladesh, including schooling and medical attention, because they are not considered citizens of either country. Both the Myanmar and Bangladeshi governments have prohibited humanitarian organizations from specifically helping the Rohingya in areas of conflict, adding to the already dire need of the Rohingya.

What caused the ongoing conflict in Rakhine State?

On May 28, 2012 a group of men robbed, raped, and murdered Ma Thida Htwe, a Rakhine woman. Eventually, three Rohingya men were arrested and sentenced to death for her murder. The image of Ma Thida Htwe’s mutilated body spread on the Internet, exacerbating the already tense relationship between the Rohingya and Rakhine. In June, violent protests erupted throughout northern Rakhine State, and on June 10 the Myanmar security forces declared a state of emergency and were authorized to use deadly force to quell the demonstrations. Both the Rohingya and Rakhine contributed to the violence that erupted. However, Rohingya shops and homes were frequently targeted by authorities and burnt down, causing mass displacement. Violence again erupted in late October and sporadic but ongoing violence and abuse continues today. Since June, Bangladeshi authorities have been accused of turning away just under 2,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing to the safer, but not necessarily freer, Bangladesh.

Is this genocide?

As of this writing, the international community has expressed criticisms of Myanmar President Thein Sein’s handling of the ongoing conflict in Rakhine State. However, this criticism has often been accompanied by praise of the country’s recent democratic reforms, sending mixed messages to the Myanmar government. The Saudi government has voiced perhaps the harshest condemnation of the Myanmar government in what it calls an “ethnic cleansing campaign” against the Rohingya. Nonetheless, the conflict has the alarming potential to become increasingly violent and devastating to the region due to its deeply rooted ethnic and racial tensions. It is up to the international community and human rights organizations, like STAND, to continue to monitor the situation in Burma for not only the sake and well being of the Rohingya, but all of those in harms way.

Already displaced from their native home in southern China, the Hmong people have drifted through various Southeast Asian countries for the past two centuries. Though they have met hostility in practically every country they have entered—including China, Thailand, and Vietnam, they have faced the most problems in Laos.

Given their unique location in Laos, lack of ties to local or national governments, and general poverty, the United States found the Hmong living in Laos to be a useful ally in the struggle against communism. During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. recruited and trained Hmong to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a vital supply line running through Laos that linked communist North Vietnam to sympathetic Viet Cong in US-backed South Vietnam. Though this resulted in the death of approximately 100,000 Hmong men, the United States kept their involvement in Laos secret. This did not help the remaining Hmong.

In 1975, just two years after the United States left Vietnam, Laos fell to a communist regime. Fully aware of the Hmong’s involvement in the Vietnam War and buoyed by the North Vietnamese, the new government retaliated against the Hmong. Fearful for their lives, many fled into neighboring Thailand, overwhelming United Nations refugee camps. However, some Hmong remained in Laos. Of those, many died during their stay in “reeducation camps” sponsored by the government. Others escaped to mountain villages where today they are barely able to eek out a living. There, the Laos government constantly harasses them–people are randomly arrested, bribes are extorted, and villagers live in constant fear of raids.

In the summer of 2011, I visited one of those villages during a brief visit to Laos after working on the Thai-Burma border. As one of many locations in a tourist package, the village was oddly out of place with the other stops that focused primarily on the scenery and natural beauty of Laos. Instead, the Hmong village was something more similar to a zoo. As my guide walked me and the other tourists through the village, it became clear that tourists were the sole source of income for these villagers—and this is the case in most of their villages.

Though the Laos government stopped persecuting the Hmong in 2011 after the death of Vang Pao, the general who led the Hmong forces during the Vietnam war, the Hmong have not faced better treatment. Still discriminated against by indigenous Laotians and relegated to impoverished communities after decades of legal harassment, the Hmong in Laos are a displaced people with nowhere left to go. Though many have sought refuge in the United States, there is little hope that the Hmong will ever be a unified people again. For them, there is no hope of a state.

The Sri Lankan Tamils are considered a stateless population. Neill Wright from the UNHCR writes, “Persons without citizenship are denied some of the most basic rights and entitlements: they cannot open a bank account, own property or work for the government; they cannot obtain an identity card, a birth certificate, a marriage certificate or a passport; if they leave the country they cannot return. For almost 200 years, this has been the predicament of a great many Tamils of Indian origin living in Sri Lanka.” Contact to the eXp Realty’s guide who would be able to help you to find the best home for your family within the required budget that you prefer.

The Tamils are a predominantly Hindu group, some of whom have lived in Sri Lanka since 2nd century BCE, and many of whom immigrated in the early 19th century to work on estates. Tamils, a minority in the country, have been subjugated by the Sinhalese government since the independence of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) in 1947. There were virtually two nations within Sri Lanka, Tamilians who lived in the North and the East, and the Sinhala in the South. The Sinhalese wanted to accrue power, which meant subduing the minority population.

First starting out as a militant group composed of youths, in 1976, the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was created as a retaliatory response to government oppression, finally admitting defeat on May 19, 2009. According the United Nations there have been a reported 100,000 deaths. The Sinhalese controlled the government for over 30 years and made four changes which led to the development of revolutionary groups:

• In 1956, Sinhala was made the official language
• Discriminatory state policies in regard to jobs, politics and education, which created discrepancies in incomes and and developments. Before independence, Tamils had received preferential treatment with colonial jobs.
• Dismissal of safeguards in the new republican constitution of 1972
• The 1958 pogram against Tamils, contributing to the deaths of 70 to 300 people

Sri Lankan Tamils’ only form of representation in civil society was the LTTE, a group that put both Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese civilians at risk. There were cases where the LTTE used Tamils as human shields to deter the Sinhalese military from targeting the LTTE and they assassinated political leaders. After the tsunami of 2006, they increased recruitment of child soldiers, training orphans to fight for them. The LTTE are reportedly the first group to use suicide bomber vests. They were deemed a terrorist organization by India in 1992, the United States in 1997, and then the Sri Lankan government in 1998. However, they were fighting for a separate state for Tamilians, in order to escape the oppression that the Sinhalese was inflicting and to impose their own ideologies, which included Marxism and secularism.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, reported, “For its part, the Government reportedly used heavy artillery on the densely populated conflict zone, despite assurances that it would take precautions to protect civilians [and they are] reported [to have] shelled a hospital clinic on several occasions.” The UN Human Rights Council argued that Sri Lanka should look into the human rights abuses themselves, a recommendation that would have served to perpetuate the violence. In response, the Sinhalese government created “welfare centers” for Tamils hoping to flee the war-stricken country. These welfare centers were effectively detention camps, where women and girls were sexually abused, and people were exposed to diseases, starvation, and direct violence. Tens of thousands of individuals were internally displaced. There has been a transition into normalcy for Sri Lanka Tamils, due to the increase of participation of citizens in elections and the emergency deregulation.

In 2003, an estimated 300,000 Tamils were not identified with a state. The Ceylon Workers Congress, working to solve this issue, helped to pass a bill in October 2003 granting 168,141 Tamils citizenship in a 10 day joint initiative with the UNHCR to help Tamils apply for citizenship.

While this is an excellent first step, there are still post-war tensions in Sri Lanka. Recently, at Jaffna University, approximately 20 students were injured by state police during a commemoration ceremony of rebels. Ideology of the LTTE has been strictly banned and the military maintains tight control over the North, where most of the infighting occurred. The UNHCR has also urged Sri Lanka to investigate alleged abuses during the final phase of war with Tamil rebels. The government has been identified as a perpetrator of war crimes due to their use of drones in “safe zone” areas. While Sri Lanka has improved the conditions of the minority population and is slowly progressing into more fair and equal state, these issues must also be addressed.

Cambodia’s main ethnic groups consist of the majority Khmer, as well as the minority Chinese, Cham, Vietnamese, and many other minority groups, including indigenous people.

It is estimated that the ethnic Vietnamese make up approximately 5% of Cambodia’s total population today. Apparently stateless and a small group, members face daily civil and human rights abuses by local Khmer authorities.

There is insufficient documentation that allows us to pinpoint exactly how far back in history ethnic Vietnamese ancestry in Cambodia goes. However, in ongoing research with people of the ethnic Vietnamese group in the Kampong Chhnang province, many claimed that their families had been living in Cambodia for decades; various people in their 40s to 70s claimed that they were sure that their great grandparents lived on this land.

In addition to their possible stateless status,¹ throughout modern history, the ethnic Vietnamese has been discriminated by every government that has ruled Cambodia. Discrimination existed under the post-French colonization, Sihanouk era, and increased significantly under Lon Nol’s government.

Once the Khmer Rouge overthrew Lon Nol and took over government, the ethnic Vietnamese was nearly wiped out as a consequence of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal purges against the population. The Khmer Rouge dismissed the fact that the ethnic Vietnamese saw themselves as Cambodian people (due to the fact that they had lived in the region for decades) and accused them of being Vietnam’s spies and internal enemies who were going to help Vietnam’s takeover of Cambodia from the inside. Such discrimination would further lead Khmer Rouge killers to accuse non-Vietnamese victims of having “Khmer bodies, but Vietnamese minds.”

Since the Khmer Rouge regime fell, outright massacres of the ethnic Vietnamese have ceased. However, ongoing civil and human rights abuses against the group continue.

Based on what available research can tell us so far, the ethnic Vietnamese population appears stateless.² They are not registered citizens in either Cambodia or Vietnam.³ It appears that Cambodia does not recognize the group as Cambodian citizens due to historical discrimination, as well as the persistent political belief that they are Vietnamese citizens who are spies and are infiltrating Cambodia from within – the rest of Cambodia’s population disregard that members of the group have ancestry that spans decades and that their loyalty in fact stays with Cambodia. On the other hand, Vietnam does not recognize the group as being native Vietnamese citizens, presumably because the group’s members were not born in or had lived for an extended period of time in Vietnam.

The consequences of the ethnic Vietnamese’s seeming statelessness results in severe limitations to the group’s political, economic, and social rights. Specifically, statelessness status of the group means that members:

• Cannot own land or property;
• Cannot be formally employment (particularly in cities);
• Cannot partake in banking activities (e.g. opening an account or obtaining loans);
• Cannot vote;
• Cannot access the judicial system (e.g. lawsuits);
• Cannot access social services (e.g. health care and education); and
• Cannot register marriages, births, or deaths; and
• Cannot travel freely (in-country, across borders, or overseas).

Thus, though the most difficult period to date for the many members of the ethnic Vietnamese minority group – the Khmer Rouge’s genocide of its people – is over, they still face civil and human rights challenges due to their lack of citizenship.

Notes:

1. More research is needed before we make a claim that the ethnic Vietnamese as a collective group is stateless; as of now, we can only claim statelessness on an individual, case-by-case basis.

2. On account of researchers being unable to prove any previous acquisition of nationality under Cambodian laws.

3. Again, research on this group is limited, so we cannot assume that all ethnic Vietnamese lack citizenship; it is therefore difficult to make a claim that the collective group, as a whole, is stateless.

This is the first in a series of posts highlighting cases of statelessness throughout the world. Click here for more information about the series.

The Banyamulenge are a stateless people from South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the Congo-Rwanda border. The marginalization and displacement of the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi minority group, from their home in eastern Congo has led to decades of violence in the region. The Banyamulenge have faced extreme processes of marginalization due to complex historical struggles, political motivations from both inside and outside the Congo, surrounding catastrophes in central Africa, and a lack of coherent leadership and organization from the Banyamulenge themselves. The Banyamulenge have continually exercised a remarkable amount of agency and have refused to occupy the “victim” role that is often prescribed to them.

Sources diverge on when the Banyamulenge migrated to the area now known as South Kivu in the DRC from Rwanda, but the general consensus is that the first original migration took place in the late nineteenth century. Differing cultural traditions and lifestyles differentiated the Banyamulenge from their Congolese neighbors from the time of their first arrival in Congo. Belgian colonization emphasized this stratification. The Belgians manipulated ethnicity to organize and remodel administrative units in the Congo. With Belgian favor clearly given to other larger ethnic communities in South Kivu, the Banyamulenge found themselves divided and dispersed through the South Kivu province with little control over their political situation. After independence in 1960, Mobutu Sese Seko, president of the DRC from 1965 to 1997, continually constructed and reconstructed the ethnicity of the Banyamulenge in order to gain greater political power. Mobutu showed favor to the Banyamulenge during the beginning of his term. However, during the 1980s, as ethnic tensions between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi began to rise, then so did tensions about about the Banyamulenge’s place in South Kivu. Because of the influx of refugees from the Rwandan and Burundian genocides in 1994 and 1995, the citizenship of the Banyamulenge was violently contested.

From the beginning of the 1990s, many Banyamulenge youth crossed the border into Rwanda to enroll in RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) training camps. As the attacks on the Banyamulenge community became increasingly violent in 1993, more and more Banyamulenge joined forces with the RPF. In July 1996, the first confrontation between RPF-trained Banyamulenge troops (that would later evolve into the AFDL) and the Congolese troops took place. After this first confrontation, the 1996 Banyamulenge rebellion took off. Banyamulenge troops began attacking and taking over major Congolese cities such as Bukavu, Goma, and Uvira. Thousands were killed, including many Banyamulenge soldiers, along the way. Ultimately the “First Congo War,” which began as a small rebellion by the Banyamulenge to regain citizenship rights, ended with the overthrow of Mobutu, thousands of dead Banyamulenge, and a Rwandan political presence that that continues today, visible in M23 actions in eastern Congo.

By the time Kabila took power in late 1997, Rwanda’s presence in Eastern Congo had become very powerful. To respond, he expelled all foreign troops from the Congo in July 1998. Because of their alliance with Rwanda in the 1996 AFDL rebellion, the Banyamulenge had virtually ostracized themselves from the rest of Congolese society. Their only ally was the powerful and self-interested Rwanda. In a forced alliance with the RPF, the Banyamulenge helped launch a second rebellion in Eastern Congo on August 2, 1998 in an attempt to regain footing within Congo. In addition to the growing gap between the Banyamulenge and the rest of Congolese society, the rebellion caused deep rifts within the Banyamulenge community.

Following the conclusion of the Second Congo War, many Banyamulenge fled from Congo. When the Congolese government revoked citizenship from the Banyamulenge in October of 1996 following the violence of the Second Congo War, this resolution was enforced. Many Banyamulenge found themselves in refugee camps in Rwanda and Burundi. Even in refugee camps, the Banyamulenge did not find safety. In 2004, a group of Hutu extremists brutally attacked an unarmed group of Banyamulenge residents of the Gatumba Refugee Camp in Burundi, near the Congolese border, killing 152 and injuring 107. Similar stories of attacks on Banyamulenge in refugee camps are common. Banyamulenge refugees often moved from camp to camp in an effort to find more security. Since 2000, many Banyamulenge survivors have been relocated to the United States. The largest group of Banyamulenge refugees is found in Portland, Maine.

Though the Banyamulenge have direct ties to the M23 through their involvement in Rwandan backed rebel movements in the past, M23 has had difficulties recruiting from the Banyamulenge community. There are only a few relatively unknown Banyamulenge officers in the M23 and a few senior Banyamulenge who had been in the CNDP (National Congress for the Defence of the People) are quite dismissive of the M23. However, as the M23 gains greater political power in the region (as exhibited through the recent capture of Goma in North Kivu), greater participation of the Banyamulenge in the movement is increasingly likely.

The history of the Banyamulenge in many ways reflects the larger history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Banyamulenge, an extremely small minority group in eastern Congo, have played central roles in the politics of both Mobutu and Laurent Kabila. Time and time again, the Banyamulenge have attempted to improve their livelihood in the face of extreme processes of manipulation, discrimination, and violence. Though there are few Banyamulenge left in eastern Congo, their presence around the world has not been ignored. The thriving diaspora in Maine has built numerous churches and has mutually reshaped both Banyamulenge and Maine culture. Last year, the Banyamulenge diaspora in Portland held a national convention for diaspora members across the United States. In fact, one of the diaspora members from Portland is a very good friend of mine who is studying to be an engineer at Colby College. He hopes to return to Central Africa one day to join his family and friends in rebuilding a new and free life in Congo. The Banyamulenge may be “stateless,” but their remarkable history of agency and their belief in a life free of discrimination and marginalization has already led to the remaking and reshaping of new homes around the world.