By Alexander Hotz
“This is proof that we are citizens!” said U Kyaw Hla Aung, a 76-year-old Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, as he clutched a laminated piece of paper. “Look!”
The paper is a National Registration Card, an identity document issued in the 1950s by the then Union of Burma. In today’s Myanmar, these documents mean nothing.
Rohingya like Kyaw Hla Aung are no longer recognized by the state: hundreds of thousands are confined to overcrowded camps for internally displaced people.