Sin Thet Maw: Myanmar's government has launched a major operation aimed at verifying the citizenship of Muslims in western Rakhine state, the coastal territory that has been torn apart by Buddhist-Muslim violence since June.
Questions over whether the region's Muslim Rohingya population qualify for citizenship are at the heart of a crisis that has killed nearly 200 people and displaced 110,000 more.
A team of Associated Press journalists that traveled to the remote island village of Sin Thet Maw found immigration officers in the midst of a painstaking, census-like operation that took them house to house.
Rakhine state government spokesman Win Myaing says the operation began November 8 in the township of Pauktaw, of which Sin Thet Maw is a part.
He says it will be carried out across all of Rakhine state.
PTI
First Published: Friday, November 30, 2012, 16:10