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YANGON: For many marginalized ethnic minority groups in conflict-plagued regions of Myanmar, next month’s national elections had offered at least a glimmer of empowerment hope.
But the decision to exclude stripes from their home countries from the vote, ostensibly over security concerns, has filled them with anger and despair, with nearly 2 million people now disenfranchised.
The National League for Democracy (NLD), ruler of Aung San Suu Kyi, is expected to return to power in the November 8 elections, only the second since the country emerged from an outright military rule. But the party faces dwindling support in many ethnic minority areas, where discontent has now intensified.
Last week, the electoral commission announced a long list of constituencies in which voting will not take place, leaving more than a million people disenfranchised in Rakhine and hundreds of thousands more elsewhere. “This is devastating,” said Hla Maung Oo, an ethnic Rakhine and head of one of the many camps for displaced people in her state.
“I am depressed about the decision, because I knew who I was going to vote for from the beginning.” Tensions in Rakhine were high even before the move.
A civil war between the Myanmar army and the Arakan Army (AA), a militant group fighting for greater autonomy for the Rakhine ethnic group, has killed and injured hundreds and forced 200,000 from their homes.
Both sides are accused of abuses, but AA still enjoys the broad support of a people who have long felt marginalized by the majority of Bamar in one of the poorest states in the nation.
Trapped in the fighting and dragged down by the consequent disenfranchisement, are other ethnic minorities, such as the Mro, Khami and Daingnet.
“We are in the middle of two groups and we are afraid of both,” said Sein Hla Tun, an ethnic group from Kyauktaw Township. “We just want a political solution to this, instead of fighting.”
A community in Rakhine State was not significantly affected by this latest decision, but only because they were already disenfranchised. Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar have had their citizenship and rights taken away for decades.
A brutal military crackdown in 2017 forced 750,000 to flee to refugee camps in Bangladesh, violence that now sees Myanmar facing genocide charges in the UN high court.
But an additional 600,000 Rohingya still live in Myanmar, the majority in Rakhine State, under what human rights groups have described as an apartheid system.
“We had no hope before, and we still have no hope,” Saw Aung, a Rohingya from Minbya municipality, told Agence France-Presse by phone. “Even if the elections were held, our situation would not improve.”
In all, nearly 2 million people of voting age will now be unable to vote, about 5 percent of the electorate.
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