“Detailed information however will not be released until a month before the actual census taking,” said the analyst on 15 November while visiting Thailand. “Officials concerned say they are afraid it will be politicized if it comes out prematurely.”

No intensive research on the number of the country’s “national races” has been made, but according to Gamanii, an analyst based in Thailand, actual count could be no more than 58:

Kachins, for example, he says, are unnecessarily divided into 12, when it should be only 6:

“The funny thing,” he says, “is that Kachin has been set apart from Jingpho, Maru and others although all of them are collectively known as Kachins.”

The same thing goes for Shans, who have been divided into 10 different national races, Palaungs into 2 and Lahu into 2 in Shan State. An ongoing campaign is urging all Shans of different clans or sub-families to be registered as one single label, that is, “Shan” or, as they call themselves, “Tai”.

Last March, a pilot census was taken in 20 townships across the country, where 41 questions were asked. “In Loikaw,” said the researcher, “the people just handed out their household registers for the enumerators to copy as they had been warned earlier by the local immigration officers that they must give correct answers. The result was that a Christian family I saw was ticked off as Buddhist, although a portrait of Jesus was hung on the wall for all to see.”

“The UNFPA (UN Fund for Population Activities) should do public consultation well beforehand,” the researcher concluded.

The census taking will be conducted on 30 March-10 April 2014. “We need to achieve peace as soon as possible,” Minister for Immigration as Population U Khin Yi told SHAN in Myitkyina on 5 November. “Because it’s only barely 5 months away. You shift your head a little and your bottom a little, and, before you know it, you’re already there.”