IDPs on Thai-Burma border tricked into signing up for referendum IDs

March 12, 2008

Observers on the Thai-Burma border are suspicious of IDs being issued by the Burmese military regime to people in areas controlled by the New Mon State Party.

Officers of the regime are enticing people to sign up for the IDs by promising they can be used for travel inside Burma. The IDs say they are good for travel within Burma for the next two years, but clarify that the ID does not make its holder a citizen.

The ID offer was greeted with enthusiastic support by hundreds of ethnic Mon Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the Halockhani refugee camp. The camp is located near the Thai-Burma border, in Southern Mon State, and is in an area designated as a “black zone” because it is controlled by armed Mon rebels. Many were receiving ID for first time in their lives, as the regime has been unwilling to give IDs to people in black zones. For those among the nearly four thousand IDPs in Halockhan, the IDs represented vast potential; legal travel within Burma, and into Thailand, is impossible without identification. The IDs, however, are of dubious quality. Normally,having an ID made in Burma requires extensive family lists, passport photos and a recommendation from a village headman. “This is what made me feel the ID was a fake. The current ID does not need a passport picture. People only have to give their parents names, sign their name and put their thumbprint on paper.”

According to reports elsewhere in Burma, the IDs are to be used to identify voters in the referendum scheduled for May. This fact was not, however, disclosed to people in the Halockhani camp. Indeed, in order to receive the ID individuals have to sign a document that declares him or her a supporter of the referendum. Many people in the camp cannot read, or can only read Mon, and were hence unaware of the document’s details, which are written in Burmese. “I felt very sad after I found out that the form meant I was a person who supports the referendum. But my thumbprint is already on the form,” said one man who recently signed up for the ID. The ID making process is slated to continue throughout NMSP controlled areas, said a source from NMSP. The process was undertaken with permission from the NMSP, but a source within the party clarified that they did not know the IDs would be used for the referendum.

Written by HURFOM · Filed Under News