YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Enumerators fanned out across Myanmar on Sunday for a census that has been widely criticized for stoking religious and ethnic tensions, after the government denied members of a long-persecuted Muslim minority the right to identify themselves as "Rohingya."
And administrators in some parts of the country — including rebel controlled areas in Kachin and Wa states — said they were barring census takers because they worry it will be used for political purposes.
Myanmar only recently emerged from a half-century of military rule and self-imposed isolation. No one knows how many people live in the predominantly Buddhist nation. The most accepted estimated, around 60 million, is based on extrapolations from the last count in 1983, that experts say was hugely flawed, leaving out many religious and ethnic minorities.