Frontier
Myanmar
CHRISTOPHER WIN
April 4, 2023
OPINION
CHRISTOPHER WIN
April 4, 2023
OPINION
Participants in a forum for youth of the Maramagri ethnic group in 2017. (Supplied)
Even after democratic reforms were launched in 2011, whenever I travelled from Rakhine State to Yangon, immigration officers would take me off the bus and force me to recite Buddhist prayers from memory. My national ID card identified me as a member of the predominantly Buddhist Maramagri ethnic minority group, but my South Asian features meant I had to prove my religion every time. Aside from the humiliating discrimination I suffered, the subtext was clear – if I had been Muslim, I wouldn’t be allowed to travel at all.