Tatmadaw rule via Ne Win’s new Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). At this point, the regime was almost entirely divorced from the country it governed, and solely focused on ensuring the longevity of the Tatmadaw’s dominance and control. More importantly, according to the new laws the Rohingya could not be citizens. Their National Registration Certificates were replaced with Foreign Registration Cards, implying that the Rohingya had no legitimate claim to the land on which they lived. Most notable is that this solidified an undeviating expansion of legal discrimination against the Rohingya by continuously shifting the legal definition of national identity. The BSPP and the regime it inaugurated created more problems for the Rohingya beyond citizenship. The BSPP began standardized and systemic human rights abuses that have continued to the present. Just four years after the Socialist Constitution was ratified, Ne Win initiated a military mission known as Operation Nagamin (Dragon King or King Dragon) carried out by the Tatmadaw and immigration officials in northern Arakan. Government paranoia over the possibility of foreign invaders resulted in an increased military presence (Human Rights Watch, 2000). The primary purpose of the build-up was to register citizens and expel those deemed to be foreigners prior to the upcoming national census. As I noted previously, the Rohingya could not be citizens according to the requirements put forth by the Socialist Constitution. Therefore, they were rounded up en masse and forcibly expelled from their villages. Most of them had no choice but to flee across the border to Bangladesh. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 Rohingya were forced out of Arakan. Refugees accused the Tatmadaw of rape, murder, and other abusive intimidation tactics (Smith, 1991). The government claimed that this mass exodus signified that the Rohingya were in fact illegal immigrants who had come to 11