The law signified a further shift towards an exclusively ethnic conception of citizenship when compared to the 1947 Constitution of Burma, the 1948 citizenship legal framework, which had defined belonging to the indigenous races as criteria for accessing citizenship, but had in addition provided for naturalisation through residence as well as ius soli. (pp. 7-8) In highlighting the importance of ethnicity regarding the legal right to belong in Burma, the law allowed the Tatmadaw and the central government to construct a national identity based on an exclusivity, one strategically crafted by the military itself for the purpose of furthering its political and economic ambitions. The 1982 citizenship law remains in effect today and has been used continuously as a tool for justifying the Tatmadaw’s genocidal clearance operations in Rakhine State. Under the authority of the 1982 law, the three levels of citizenship mentioned earlier are used to denote status within society as well as signify which rights an individual is entitled to, based on the category to which they are designated. Full citizens—the only group that is fully protected under Burmese law—are identified as members of the eight ethnic groups (later subcategorized into 135 national races) determined to have settled in Burma prior to the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1823. Full citizenship is also attainable for “(a) persons who were citizens on the date the law entered into force, (b) persons both of whose parents hold a category of citizenship (including at least one parent full citizen), and (c) third generation offspring of associate and/or naturalized citizens. (Arraiza & Vonk, 2017, p. 8) The disenfranchisement of the other two categories of citizens served to elevate “national races” to a societal status unattainable by entire groups of people. This also put various ethnic groups at greater risk of abuse by the military because they did not have legal designations to protect them from such exploits. An example of this is the case of 67