A European Union-funded app designed to help voters get information about Myanmar’s November 8 election risks inflaming “racism and religious nationalism” and is complicit in erasing the Rohingya’s identity, activists have said.
The mVoter 2020 app, designed by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), displays candidates’ “race and religion” data and in one case uses the derogatory term “Bengali” to refer to the Rohingya.
Local advocacy group Justice for Myanmar said the data was “presumably based on official race and religion categories that have rendered Rohingya stateless and which have been used as a pretext to disqualify Rohingya candidates and disenfranchise Rohingya voters from the election”.
The app, which launched on Tuesday, was built in partnership with the Asia Foundation and Myanmar’s Union Election Commission.
It offers voters access to profiles of candidates that prominently state their official ethnicity and religion.
The profile for Dus Muhammed, a Rohingya candidate also known as Aye Win, states that he and his parents are “Bengali Bamar”. Rohingya are commonly referred to as Bengali inside Myanmar, a sign of the success of a decade long extremist campaign to erase their identity and paint them as foreign intruders.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Aye Win told Myanmar Now. “They’ll just describe me as they like. But I’m a Rohingya, of course.”
He is one of the few Rohingya candidates who were allowed to stand in this year’s election. Others from his Democracy and Human Rights Party were barred.
Yadanar Maung, a Justice for Myanmar spokesperson, said: “The EU, IDEA and Asia Foundation-supported app explicitly directs Myanmar voters to consider race and religion, when they should be considering candidates based on their merits and political platform, regardless of cultural background or religious belief.
“Instead of providing access to much-needed, accurate information for voters, the mVoter 2020 app risks inflaming ethnic and religious nationalism during the election. The publicising of candidate race and religion would be unacceptable to voters in donor countries, and is unacceptable in Myanmar.”
International IDEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday afternoon.
A link to download the mVoter 2020 app displayed an error message when accessed on Wednesday after Justice for Myanmar’s statement was published.
