"...For the Rohingya, straddling post-colonial borders, losing one nationality was a predictable misfortune. Losing two was a matter of calculated, official carelessness - in the most literal sense. The rocky road began back in the 1960?s, during General Ne Win?s "Burmanisation" campaign. Eager to clear up racial business left over from Burma?s British days, when Indian and Chinese traders swanned across the border, Ne Win?s Revolutionary Council embarked on a campaign of nationalization. Confiscating their businesses ensured the ethnically-foreign enterprising classes got the message. Approximately 300,000 Indians and 100,000 Chinese fled, hobbling vital rice and timber export industries and ensuring vital goods like medicine and petrol were in short supply. To ensure these "foreigners" didn?t return, and to give Burmanisation official meaning, the government passed an Emergency Immigration Act in 1974. This required all citizens to carry identity cards (registration cards), which neatly gave the military government the practical means of saying who was and was not entitled to Burmese nationality. The Rohingya weren?t, they got "Foreign Registration Cards". At this stage, citizenship-stripping proved more ominous than critical to Rohingya. They lived in a remote part of a rebellious province, largely outside the realm of official Burma. For two decades after independence, Arakan/Rakhine separatists had fought with the Rangoon government and armed Rohingya Jihadi occasionally lent a hand. But during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ne Win, his generals and their Burma Socialist Programme Party extended central control over some of Burma?s recalcitrant provinces, including Arakan. Non-citizens found their rights to travel and marry curtailed, and then citizenship started to matter very much indeed..."