Census information is yet to be collected in Rakhine State on about 900,000 people who describe themselves as Rohingya despite a decision to extend the data collection exercise there, the Minister of Immigration and Population, U Khin Yee, told a news conference in Yangon on May 7.
“I will negotiate with the Bengalis to let us collect their census information,” U Khin Yee told the news conference. The minister said he would travel to Rakhine on May 9 for the negotiations “and we will continue our efforts until the last day of May”.
The census ended in most of the nation on April 10 but a senior ministry official said last month the data collection exercise in Rakhine would be extended for eight weeks until June 10.
Announcing the decision on April 22, the official, Population Department director-general U Myint Kyaing, said an extension was necessary because there were “more than 700,000 Bengalis missing from the census data”.
The decision came after enumerators in Rakhine declined to collect data from those who insisted on the right to describe their ethnic identity as Rohingya.
U Khin Yee said at the May 7 news conference that ministry records from 2012 suggested there were “1.05 million Bengalis in Rakhine State.”
He said that since April 10, data had been collected from about 200,000 people in Sittwe, Kyaukphyu, Maungdaw, Mrauk-U and Thandwe townships who had listed their ethnic identity as “Bengali”.
The government uses the term “Bengali” to describe those who call themselves Rohingya because it regards them as illegal immigants from Bangladesh.
On April 1, the United Nations Population Fund, which provided technical support for the census, described the decision by the government to refuse to allow Rohingya to self-identify their ethnicity as such, as a“departure from international census standards, human rights principles and agreed procedures.”
Referring to obstacles to gathering data in Kachin State, where the census was also extended until June 10, U Khin Yee said the residents of 97 villages under the control of the Kachin Independence Organisation were yet to be included in the data collection exercise.
A meeting would be held with the KIO on May 13 to discuss the collection of data in the villages, the minister said.
U Khin Yee said provisional census results would be released in August but data from regions where the data collection exercise was extended would not be available until May 2015.
