In June of 2015, though the global media was riveted to the sight of Syrian refugees crossing by boat into Europe, for a few days its attention shifted to a solitary boat adrift in the Andaman Sea. Its deck too was packed with refugees, members of the Rohingya community attempting to escape Myanmar and find asylum anywhere else in South East Asia.
For a few days, the world was aware of a different kind of stranded people – not ones escaping the country of their citizenship, but ones who have been denied the citizenship of any country. The stateless are treated as illegal aliens in the places they live, but refused passports or papers that allow them to leave (so they rarely do). The most basic documents of modern life, like marriage certificates and drivers licences, are kept beyond their reach.
It’s a global tragedy, Greg Constantine writes in the foreword to Nowhere People, his book of photographs of stateless communities across the world. Statelessness can have many origins – shifting borders, changing laws, the collapse and creation of states – but in every case, ethnic difference “leads governments and people in power to use citizenship as a weapon to disenfranchise those who they feel threaten their political, ethnic or personal interests.” (Courtesy of The Wire)
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