Photo 3 : Rakhine women, a boy and a monk using mobile internet in Mrauk U. Photo – Kaung Mrat Naing (Maungdaw) Under the military’s 1982 Citizenship law, the population is categorized into eight major ethnic groups or Taiyingtha (“sons of the soil”) and are further broken down into 135 “national races.”11 The Bamar/Burman make up nearly 70 percent of the total population, while Kachin, Karenni, Karen, Chin, Mon, Rakhine, and Shan make up the other major ethnic groups. 12 The Rohingya are excluded from the official list and are not considered by the government to be citizens of Myanmar.13 The Tatmadaw institutionalized Bamar hegemony in all facets of civil, political and cultural life, at the expense of ethnic minorities’ rights14. Ethnic armed organizations (“EAOs”), seeking greater autonomy and self-determination, have launched insurgencies which continue to this very day in numerous parts of the country including Rakhine and Chin states to the west, and Kachin and Shan states in the north. The Tatmadaw often hold themselves out as the “saviors” who are keeping Myanmar from disintegration against the ethnic internal forces seeking to destroy it.15 11 Cheesman, ”How in Myanmar,” 461-483. 12 Tom Kramer, “Ethnic Conflict and Land Rights,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 82, no. 2 (2015): 355, 357, http://themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/documents/Academic_article_Ethnic_Conflict_and_Land _Rights_Tom_Kramer_2015.pdf. 13 Violet Cho, “Ethnicity and Identity,” in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Myanmar, ed. Adam SIMpson, Nicholas Farrelly, and Ian Holliday (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2018), 43, 45. 14 Bertil Lintner, Land of Jade: A Journey Through Insurgent Burma (Edinburgh: Kiscadale Publications, 1990). 15 Lintner, Land of Jade, 65. 7