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Suu Kyi faces mounting criticism on her stand over Rohingya

Posted in Featured, World

Published on September 24, 2017 with No Comments

“Myanmar must take back Rohingya,” Bangladesh PM
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has issued a new call for Myanmar to take back the some 420,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in the Buddhist-dominated country.
Hasina, speaking to Bangladeshi activists in New York where she is attending the UN General Assembly, also called for greater international pressure on Myanmar over the new crisis which has unfolded in the past three weeks, media reports said.
“We have told Myanmar, they are your citizens, you must take them back, keep them safe, give them shelter, there should not be any oppression and torture,” she said.
The prime minister said Bangladesh was making diplomatic efforts to persuade Myanmar to take back the refugees. “But the Myanmar government is not responding to the calls. Rather, Myanmar is laying landmines along the border to stop the return of Rohingyas to their homeland,” she said.
Myanmar’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said in a speech hours earlier that the country would take back verified refugees. Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal migrants from Bangladesh and refuses them citizenship, even though many have lived there for decades.
At a meeting of Islamic nations on the sidelines of the UN assembly, Hasina said Yangon was spearheading a state- sponsored propaganda campaign to call the Rohingya ‘Bengalis’, adding that they must be given Myanmar citizenship. Hasina sought “urgent humanitarian assistance” from Muslim nations to cope with the influx of Rohingya who have fled what she called “ethnic cleansing”, the state BSS news agency reported.
“It is an unbearable human catastrophe. I have visited them and listened to the stories of their grave sufferings, particularly of women and children,” she said.
“I would like you all to come to Bangladesh and hear from them about the atrocities in Myanmar,” she said.
The majority of the refugees are women and children.
While Bangladesh has earned international praise for opening its doors to the Rohingyas, aid agencies have warning of a growing humanitarian crisis as authorities struggle to provide even basic facilities for the new arrivals.

Aung San Suu Kyi faced mounting criticism over what some world leaders are now calling the “ethnic cleansing” of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, despite her plea for patience from the international community.
The head of Myanmar’s civilian administration pledged to hold rights violators to account over the crisis in Rakhine state, but refused to blame Myanmar’s powerful military for the attacks that have driven 421,000 Muslim Rohingya out of her mainly Buddhist country.
But her speech, delivered in English and clearly aimed at deflecting international anger as world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, failed to quell international anger at reports that the Rohingya are being burned out of their homes.
“The military operation must stop, humanitarian access must be guaranteed and the rule of law restored in the face of what we know is ethnic cleansing,” French President Emmanuel Macron told world leaders gathered for the week of high-level diplomacy.
The United States’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was moved to call Suu Kyi.While Tillerson welcomed the pledge to crack down on abuses, he also urged both the government and the military “to address deeply troubling allegations of human rights abuses and violations” during the telephone conversation, his spokeswoman said.
Amnesty International joined the outcry, saying Suu Kyi was “burying her head in the sand” over documented army abuses and claims of rape, murder and the systematic clearing of scores of villages.
And in New York, there was pressure from leaders like Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, who compared the crisis to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
“If this tragedy in Myanmar is not stopped, the history of humanity will face the embarrassment of another dark stain,” Erdogan said, calling for the Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh to be allowed to return to the homes in which they “have lived for centuries.”
In her long-anticipated speech, Suu Kyi — a former political prisoner and Nobel Peace laureate who won international acclaim for her role in campaigning for a return to elected rule in Myanmar — failed to offer any concrete way out of the crisis.
Myanmar’s army acts without civilian oversight and makes all security decisions, including its notorious scorched earth counterinsurgency operations.

 

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