Internal passport

An internal passport is an identification document issued for the purpose of allowing or restricting the movement of citizens within their country. Examples of countries that used or use internal passports include the former Soviet Union (see propiska) and, currently, North Korea.

Internal passports were used by the Soviets to control where a citizen could live, work or receive medical treatment. All residents were required by law to record their address on the document, and to report any changes to the relevant Ministry (e.g., by the age of 45, a person has to have three photographs of himself in the passport due to the effects of aging, taken an the age of 16 (when it is issued), 25 and 45). In Ukraine, these laws were struck down by its Constitutional Court in 2001 on the grounds of unconstitutionality. In Russia, similar cases have so far failed, and the system remains in place, although largely reduced.

In the People's Republic of China, for Hong Kong and Macao residents to enter mainland China, they need a permit issued by the PRC government through the Guangdong Public Security Bureau. The system is retained after Hong Kong's and Macao's reunion with China in 1997 and 1999 respectively. The PRC government often deny applications of permits from democracy advocates in Hong Kong. In the other way round, a travelling permit, issued by the PRC government, is required for residents of mainland China to visit Hong Kong or Macao.

The People's Republic of China also maintains a system of residency registration known as hukou, by which government permission is needed to formally change one's place of residency. This system effectively controlled internal migration before the 1980s, but market reforms have caused the system to collapse as a means of migration control and an estimated 150 to 200 million people are part of the blind flow and have unofficially migrated, generally from poor, rural areas to wealthy, urban ones. Unofficial residents are, however, often denied official services such as education and medical care and are sometimes topics of both social and official discrimination.

In Malaysia, residents from the Peninsular Malaysia are required to produce passports upon entry to Sabah and Sarawak (East Malaysia). There is also a need for migrants from Peninsular Malaysia to obtain work permits in order to work in East Malaysia. However, residents from East Malaysia do not have to produce any passport or work permit in order to travel or work in Peninsular Malaysia. This is largely due to the historical context of which; during the formation of the Federation of Malaysia, an important clause demanded was that immigration and work permit should remain under the control of the individual state governments of Sabah and Sarawak.

Some civil liberties campaigners in western democracies have likened some planned counter-terrorism measures as a akin to the introduction of an internal passport. For instance, Tim Lott, writing in London's Evening Standard in December 2002 said that the proposed British identity card was a possible pre-cursor to an "internal passport".

Similar ardent privacy advocates in the United States, such as Bill Scannell of dontspyon.us, called the CAPPS II plan to colour-code air passengers by their potential terrorist status as a prelude to an internal passport. The phrase has not however gained wide currency with the respect to these measures.

References

• Report on Ukraine's Constitutional Court striking down internal passport laws from Ukrainian Weekly (http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2001/470102.shtml)
• Tim Lott writing on British "internal passports" (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/2461267)
• dontspyon.us on CAPPS II (http://www.dontspyonus.com/galileo.html)