Life in Myanmar without an ID card
The story of an Indian woman born in Myanmar, who was not given a proper ID card due to her ethnic and religious background.
“My name is Hnaung and I am 23 years old. I live in Myanmar(Burma). I was graduated from Yangon University of Foreign Languages with Russian specialization. But I had to try everything by myself. My family did not have enough money to get me to a school.
My family was not educated also, they did not know how to raise a child or they did not care about their child’s future. It is always a way for the poor people to act like normal. I tried to live in my own way. After I passed my matriculation examination, I had to go to another city called Yangon to get keep my studying at university. My family did not allow me to go, because they said I was just an Indian girl. They thought a girl did not need to study, she just needed to cook or do household things, they thought a girl should not go out alone and at first they did not allow me to wear trousers.
My elder sister came to Yangon and studied computer science at Pyay township without letting me know. When I knew that I did not go to school to study computer science for a week, they could not change my mind, then they allowed me to go to Yangon and study foreign language as I could stay at a governmental hostel. But also I still have a problem at first because I cannot go to university without an ID card. They allowed me to study at their university, I don’t know why maybe I got lucky. As it was an university for learning foreign languages, there were a lot of chances to get scholarships.
But I did not have any chance to get scholarship or could not go aboard, because I do not have an ID card. It felt like I was a stateless. My dreams were gone. All the time that I dedicated into this was left nothing more I can do. I realized that was not my fault but at the final year of my study there also had a problem. A person without ID card could not graduate in Burma. It tore me up. I went to the department of immigration and labor to get an ID card since I had passed the matriculation examination. I still did not have an ID, even when I was at final year of my study. I went to the Rector U Kyi Shwin to give me a chance. First he did not allow me to get graduate, but my teachers helped convince him to give me a chance. I felt like I was a luckiest person in the world that I was going to be a graduated person as I wanted my whole life.
My family called me back to stay with them and prevented me from work. All the reasons is because I am an Indian. I did not go back to them and now I am staying alone in Yangon. I applied for work but most of the company in Myanmar is that they do not accept people without ID cards. So that was always like a problem to me hard to try or hard to get to a good company without ID card. I lived alone in troubles. I got my ID card after a year of my graduation and that was a card for naturalized citizen. I thought how could it be possible getting that kind of card, I was born here in Myanmar and over 20 years of my life was spent in Myanmar. How it was a valid system to get like that. I hate the way the they treat us. I worked as a secretary for a year. Then the virus called COVID-19 happened on all over the world, everywhere and in Myanmar. I lost my job as it terminated because of coronavirus. I started helping people and doing volunteering, but still searching for jobs opportunity.”