NEW DELHI: The military ruled Myanmar started its first census after Independence but tension remains in the neighbouring Northeast and adjacent Bangladesh over Rohingya Muslims who are not considered as citizens.
Reports said that Myanmar census takers made their final rounds on Thursday in the country’s first population tally in three decades, which triggered international concern over a refusal to recognise the stateless Rohingya.
More than 10 million households have taken part in the survey, according to official figures for the first 10 days of the 12-day exercise, which is designed to plug widespread information gaps in the poverty-stricken nation.
But the census has come under criticism from its own backers in the United Nations (UN) and Western governments after authorities decided not to allow minority Muslims to register their ethnicity as Rohingya, following a fresh wave of unrest in the western state of Rakhine.
This has meant potentially tens of thousands of Rohingya have gone unrecorded, while thousands more in conflict-torn northern Kachin were also missed out after ethnic minority rebels refused to allow enumerators into their territory.
Myanmar views the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, despite many being able to trace their family back for generations in Myanmar.
The country’s first census since 1983 has largely been carried out by an army of teachers and its 41 questions were designed to give policymakers a full picture of the country as it emerges from decades of direct military rule, which ended in 2011.
Critics warned the UN and donors in the run-up to the census that the tally had the potential to spark unrest, pointing out controversy over questions of ethnicity and religion in the survey.
They accused the organisers of focusing exclusively on technical issues and ignoring the political problems it could raise in the country formerly known as Burma.
In Myanmar, population counts were known to have taken place since 500 BC, during the era of King Thadodipa Mahadamayaza of the Tagaung Dynasty.
The first modern population census was carried out for lower Myanmar in 1872 under the British administration, as a part of Indian census.
