The Myanmar regime is mandating new biometric IDs for foreign travel and public services, in a move that could boost its surveillance powers, but a clumsy rollout is creating bottlenecks and fuelling illegal migration.
By FRONTIER
Dawn is breaking and, more than three hours before the immigration department in Yangon’s East Hlaing Tharyar Township opens its gates, a large crowd of mostly young people and prospective migrant workers are already gathered outside the office.
“Hundreds of people come but the office only accepts 120 per day because they say that’s all they can handle,” one person queuing told Frontier. “Yesterday I was too late. Today I arrived at 6am and my token number is 89.”
They will have their fingerprints, faces and irises scanned, to be stored in a central digital registry in which the military regime eventually plans to include biometric data from every Myanmar national over the age of 10.
Many are concerned that the new e-ID scheme will be used to enforce the mandatory military conscription policy recently introduced by the junta, and to track down political dissidents. But they have little choice – e-IDs will be needed to acquire passports and pass through border controls, access healthcare and education services, register SIM-cards, open bank accounts and receive driving licences and local worker identification cards.
Cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles have opened opportunities for brokers and bribery, and are pushing some to take their chances with illegal migration, further encouraged by the threat of surveillance.
Previous military regimes have mostly relied on sheer brutality, networks of informants and routine torture of suspects to enforce their rule over Myanmar, but the current junta is also trying to adopt more sophisticated technology to tighten its grip over a restive population.
“They are killing many birds with one stone,” said Daw Wai Phyo Myint, Asia-Pacific policy analyst for Access Now, an international digital rights non-profit. “The military is working harder to collect the biometric data to strengthen a tracking system built to detect their opponents.”
The first step for those queuing outside township immigration offices across the country is to get a card with a Unique Identification Number, a mere sheet of paper with a passport-type photo, a QR code, a 10-digit number and the holder’s personal data – their name, father’s name, date of birth, blood type, phone number and current address.
An immigration department source in southern Shan State said these paper cards are a temporary certificate until the regime can make more durable smart cards, to be called a National ID, with an embedded integrated circuit chip. The source said this might happen “in the near future”.
But Wai Phyo Myint is sceptical the regime would be able to issue smart cards any time soon, because it lacks the technology and funds.
“A chip is needed to print a smart card. Then they need to add data, so they will need technical assistance, and a huge budget. In fact for the junta, the smart card is not their real goal. With this current UID registration they are already getting people’s personal data. They are doing mass profiling,” she said.
The Ministry of Immigration and Population claims it has inserted the existing personal data of 52 million people and more than 13 million households into a national database as a first step towards implementing the programme. This non-biometric data is based on paper forms kept in local administration offices that list the members of individual households.
However, it’s unclear how many people have had their biometric data recorded under the new scheme. According to the ministry’s latest statistics, released in October last year, it had collected biometric data and issued UID numbers for just 2.1 million people.
The UID registration system was launched in June 2023, but people took little notice until the junta announced the new cards would be needed when applying for passports, starting April 22.
Bottlenecks and bribery
In order to get the UID card, applicants have to bring their current paper ID card, officially known as the Citizen Scrutiny Card, and a household certificate. It sounds simple enough, but in practice there are many bureaucratic obstacles. In addition to limited quotas, candidates must wait in multiple lines and deal with Myanmar’s notoriously unreliable record-keeping.
A woman who got her UID card at the East Hlaing Tharyar office explained that applicants first have to fill out a form with their personal data, and then immigration staff check it against the information stored in their computer system. If the information matches, they can queue again to have their biometric data taken.
“If your data in their computer system is correct then you get the UID card very quickly. But if the data is wrong or missing something, they tell you to correct the data at the immigration department that issued your original CSC,” she said.
The central computer system frequently has incorrect information – such as a misspelling of a name or a wrong date of birth.
This is unsurprising for a country of over 54 million people that has always struggled to keep accurate records – as testified by the many errors found on the electoral rolls for the 2015 and 2020 elections. But now these mistakes must be corrected at the original township department source – a byzantine process that often forces people to resort to “brokers”, who can speed things up, for a fee.
Yangon resident Ko Than Htut* had planned to go to Japan to work in agriculture, but first needed a passport. He has now been waiting a month to correct his father’s name on the e-ID server. The Shwepyithar Township immigration department in Yangon says it has received no reply from their counterparts in the Kawthaung Township department in Tanintharyi Region, where Than Htut is originally from.
“The error has to be corrected on the server of the original township that issued the CSC. So the department where I live now has to contact the original office by phone. It should take a short time, but most staff refuse to respond right away,” he said.
That’s when the brokers come into play. Than Htut had no choice but to cut corners, as his appointment to apply for a passport was fast approaching.
“There’s no point going in person to the township office, but the brokers can do it within minutes. The service fee ranges from K50,000 to K200,000,” he said, around US$12-$49 at the current market rate.
The brokers’ fees are even higher for those townships where the regime has no offices operating, usually because anti-regime forces have seized them. In those cases, they have to correct the data directly in Nay Pyi Taw.
Corruption at border crossings is even worse for people trying to get their UIDs to travel abroad. A resident of the Kayin State trading hub Myawaddy town, on the border with Thailand, said arguments and even fights have become common among the thousands queuing at the township’s immigration department.
“People who pay brokers can enter the office quickly and get the UID. The brokers and the department staff are profiting off of this together,” the resident said.
The Myawaddy office was even reportedly temporarily closed after a resident complained about public officials taking bribes, leading one official to beat him.
This chaos and the threat of surveillance is pushing some to risk leaving Myanmar via illegal routes.
Dr Ko Han*, a post-graduate studying mental health who joined the mass strike of civil servants protesting the 2021 coup, said he no longer felt safe staying with his parents in Yangon because the administration in his ward in Bahan Township had started to collect the personal data of young men eligible for military service.
He planned to enter Thailand through the Tachileik-Mae Sai border gate, in eastern Shan, and head to Bangkok. He prepared for his trip months ago by “losing” his old ID card, which listed his occupation as doctor – a status that would block him from leaving Myanmar – and applied for a new one that said he’s a shop owner.
But when he was waiting at a hotel in Tachileik town, the junta announced that the new UIDs were required to pass the border checkpoint. Fearing that if he tried to apply for a UID, the national database would indicate he is an anti-regime activist, Ko Han decided to cross the border illegally.
U Moe Kyo, chair of Joint Action Committee for Burma Affairs in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, told Frontier that more people were risking an illegal – and dangerous – crossing because of the new regulations.
“These days more people are entering Thailand by illegal routes because they want to avoid conscription. If people can’t get a UID in an official queue, they will pay for it. If they are still having trouble, they will come over illegally,” he said.
An old project resurrected
The elected National League for Democracy, which was overthrown in the 2021 coup, already had plans to implement a nationwide e-ID system, but members of the resistance think their intentions were very different.
“I understand that the previous government wanted to make a system consistent with international standards, human rights and privacy in order to systematically identify people. Now the military council is doing the opposite,” U Kyaw Zaw, spokesperson of the National Unity Government, a parallel administration set up by lawmakers ousted in the coup, told Frontier.
“They are doing it to suppress the public by using biometric data, and to watch the people who are supporting the democratic forces and the revolutionary forces against them,” he added.
The e-ID programme is just one prong of this apparent surveillance effort. In parallel with the biometric data collection, the regime appears to be stepping up preparations for a national census in October. The census, meanwhile, has been repeatedly conflated with efforts to update voter lists for a planned election that many see as an effort to legitimise military rule.
Immigration minister Myint Kyaing said on April 26 that some 42,000 enumerators would begin training on data collection in August. Alluding to warnings by resistance groups that they would not allow the regime to conduct census activities on their territory, he admitted that political and security issues are a challenge. He also noted that unlike the last census held in 2014 with significant help from the United Nations and international donors, this operation would go ahead with no international assistance.
The regime has tried to turn to allies India and China for assistance in rolling out the e-ID scheme, but it’s unclear if any concrete help ever materialised.
In a sign of how isolated the regime is, junta-controlled media reported that the Myanmar Computer Federation is helping to build the e-ID system, while Frontier has also learned that the immigration ministry has been using the technical assets and expertise of universities.
A student at the University of Computer Studies in Tanintharyi’s Myeik town said that immigration department officials often visit and use university computers to insert people’s data into the e-ID main server.
“Sometimes students assigned by the rector had to help as volunteers. Recently a group from the township department came and loaded the data of people in Myeik Township who will turn 18 in 2025,” she said.
The university office phone line was down when Frontier called, and the MCF declined to comment.
* denotes the use of a pseudonym for safety reasons
