Maungdaw: The membership cards issued by the Union Solidarity and Development Association cannot be used as a travel document by Muslim members as guaranteed by the association during its campaign to expand in Muslim villages in northern Arakan State, said Hafezul Rahman, a USDA member, on Tuesday.
"We were told during the campaign that the USDA is the strongest and biggest organization in Burma, and we would have the right to travel freely across Arakan with the USDA membership card. But it is practically impossible for us to travel from one Nasaka area to another even in our own Maungdaw Township with that card," he said.
The Muslim people in northern Arakan, known as Rohingya among international communities, have been confined to their own locales for nearly two decades because of strict travel restrictions known as the regional Muslim laws that have been imposed by the current military regime.
Muslims, who wish to travel from their residence to another place have to apply for approval of the immigration or Nasaka authorities and must pay anywhere from 1,500 to 40,000 Kyat. Any person who travels without permission is arrested and jailed from six months to one year by military authorities.
"What the USDA guaranteed during the canvassing was just wooing to get support from the Muslim community," he said. However, he added that when he was traveling from his home to nearby Buthidaung Town recently, he was sent away from the Nasaka check post at the Three-Mile Tunnel without being arrested for traveling without permission after he showed his USDA membership card.
According to other Muslim villagers, the USDA has since mid-2009 been recruiting new members with propaganda promising full citizen rights, but has mostly used force and threats of confiscating their property in Buthidaung and Maungdaw Townships.
The USDA has already formed village units comprised of 15 to 30 members in each village in the two northern townships.
Members are being provided with membership cards that list their ethnicity and religion as either Myanmar/Muslim or Rakhine/Muslim, the same as their white temporary citizen cards, which declare on the back, "by this card the bearer cannot claim citizenship of any country."
Sources in Maungdaw told Narinjara that Deputy Home Minister Brigadier General Phone Swe held meetings with government officials, USDA members, and local Muslim residents during his visit from Rangoon to Buthidaung and Maungdaw along with some prominent Muslim businessmen.
Phone Swe, in his meetings with local residents urged them to vote for the "lion marker", which is the logo of the USDA for the forthcoming election.
News has been spreading in the Muslim dominated townships near Bangladesh that four prominent Muslim businessmen, who are close associates of the regime's generals, will contest as USDA candidates in the two townships in the election.
Dr. Bashir and Htay Win are said to have been nominated to contest in the Buthidaung constituencies, while Aung Zaw Win and Aung Naing will contest in the Maungdaw constituencies.
Similarly, the National Unity Party, NUP, formerly known as the Burmese Socialist Programme Party, has been launching campaigns to recruit members and canvass for votes among the Muslim communities in Buthidaung and Maungdaw Township since the beginning of this year.
Both the USDA and NUP, according to observers, are being backed by the Burmese regime. Their recruitment activities and canvassing are flouting the political party registration laws recently declared by the Union Election Commission, as they have not yet registered and approved as political parties with the commission.
According to the state-run media, only five out of 19 applicant parties have been approved by the Election Commission to form political parties. The 88 Generation Student and Youths (Union of Myanmar), the Union of Myanmar Federation of National Politics, the PaO National Organization, the Taaung National Party, and the Wunthanu NLD, have been approved to form parties.
The Arakan League for Democracy, the party that won the third-highest votes in Arakan State in the 1990 election in Burma, has declared they will boycott the election, claiming that the constitution drafted by the ruling regime has no democratic rights for ethnic minorities and is designed to entrench military rule.
