TheJakartaPost
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No one allowed to be stateless, says religious leader
The general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Nepal, K
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he general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Nepal, K.B. Rokaya, said on Wednesday that no one was allowed to be stateless, such as what was being experienced by the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.
'It is a gross violation of human rights,' he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday on the sidelines of the press conference of Christian Conference of Asia (CCA).
In 1982, Myanmar passed a special law that rendered millions of Rohingya Muslims stateless and without basic citizenship rights. They were not allowed to travel without official permission.
Rokaya explained that even though Christians were also a minority group in Nepal, they enjoyed better conditions than the Rohingya people in Myanmar as Christians in Nepal were acknowledged as citizens in the Buddhist country.
He urged governments of countries involved in the growing Rohingya refugee crisis in Southeast Asia to take care of their citizens, as 'they should not be stateless, becoming citizens of a certain country.' (fsu/ebf) (++++)
