In 1948, shortly after independence, the Union Citizenship Act was passed (and amended a decade later under Ne Win’s Caretaker Government) in conjunction with the 1947 Constitution of Burma. This new legal measurement provided further instruction on the definition of a citizen: “There shall be but only one citizenship throughout the Union; that is to say, there shall be no citizenship of the unit as distinct from the citizenship of the Union” (Constitution, 1947, Ch. 2, Sec. 10). This definition consolidated the population of Burma in a way that placed it permanently under the jurisdiction of the central government—and thus ultimately the military. Since then the Tatmadaw have continued to use this legal stipulation to prevent unification of individual ethnic groups around political or economic causes not in line with military goals. Furthermore, this has also been used to thwart efforts of ethnic states to secede from the Union of Burma — a right designated to them by Panglong Agreement of 1947. The 1947 constitution lays out further stipulations regarding means of control to those in authority. According to the constitution: Citizens . . . are persons who belong to an “indigenous race,” have a grandparent from an “indigenous race,” are children of citizens, or lived in British Burma prior to 1942. Under this law, citizens are required to obtain a National Registration Card (NRC), while non-citizens are given Foreign Registration Certificates (FRC). (Ullah, 2017, para. 7) Despite the fact that the 1947 constitution largely followed a democratic outline, requirements such as those laid out above provided the military with the ability to survey who was and who was not legally considered a citizen—and therefore who the military could or could not coerce, manipulate, or abuse in pursuit of its agenda. An example of this can be clearly seen in the Rakhine case study discussed later, as Rohingya Muslims are considered to be outsiders according to current Burmese law. Therefore, the military 62