Rohingya people face identity issue in Pakistan
Pakistan's port city of Karachi is home to the largest Rohingiya population outside Myanmar. The first migration of these Rohingiyas started about four decades ago when they were welcomed here.
Since then, the migration continued as the violence against Rohingiyas did not stop in Myanmar. But then the circumstances in Pakistan changed and the situation started turning against Rohingiyas.
Now, after almost 40 years when their numbers, according to some estimates, has reached over 250,000, they are facing identity issue with no legal status in Pakistan.
National Data Base and Registration Authority or NADRA is denying renewal of IDs even for very old Rohingiyas who have spent over four decades in Pakistan. These are NADRA-issued IDs that Pakistan is not accepting now for renewal. Sources in Pakistan's registration authority say that it is the lack of law that is to blame for confusion over Rohingiyas and other migrants' status.
Meanwhile, the lawmakers are avoiding taking sensitive decisions as there are divisions among different political parties over migrant-policies particularly in Sindh that hosts a large number of migrants. This situation has left the already persecuted Rohingiya community in a vulnerable condition where they face daily police harassments that experts say, can lead Rohingiya young generation to take refuge in the hands of terrorist organizations like the newly surfaced ISIL in Karachi.
The UN raised alarm last year that a long history of persecution of Rohingiya Muslims by Myanmar government could amount to “Crimes Against Humanity”. The decades-old persecution of Rohingiya minority by Myanmar Buddhist majority forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingiyas to flee their home in Arkan that is now called Rakhain in Myanmar and take refuge in neighboring countries like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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