Pope talks to general about Rohingya

YANGON, MYANMAR • Pope Francis opened a diplomatically fraught trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh on Monday by immediately diving into the crisis over Myanmar’s crackdown on Rohingya Muslims: He met with the country’s military chief, even before beginning the official program of his trip.

The Vatican didn’t provide details of the contents of Francis’ 15-minute “courtesy visit” with Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and three officials from the bureau of special operations. It took place in the residence of the archbishop of Yangon, Cardinal Charles Bo, who has resisted international condemnation of the military’s operations against Rohingya as “ethnic cleansing.”

The general is in charge of security in Rakhine state, where the military’s “clearance operations” against the Muslim minority have sent more than 620,000 Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh. Refugees there have told of entire villages being burned and women and girls being raped.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said: “They spoke of the great responsibility of the authorities of the country in this moment of transition.”

Gen. Min Aung Hlaing’s office said in a statement on Facebook he is willing to have “interfaith peace, unity and justice.” The general added there was no religious or ethnic persecution or discrimination

THEY SPOKE OF THE GREAT RESPONSIBILITY OF THE AUTHORITIES OF THE COUNTRY.

in Myanmar, and the government allowed different faith groups to have freedom of worship.

Rohingya Muslims were stripped of their citizenship in 1982, denying them almost all rights and rendering them stateless. They cannot travel freely, practice their religion, or work as teachers or doctors, and they have little access to medical care, food or education.

The meeting was planned for Wednesday, after Francis was to have met with the country’s civilian leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, in the capital. The Vatican didn’t say why it was moved up.

Rohingya in recent months have been subject to what the United Nations says is a campaign of “textbook ethnic cleansing” by the military in Rakhine. But Myanmar’s Catholic Church has publicly urged Francis to avoid using the term “Rohingya,” which is shunned by many locally.

Francis has already prayed for “our Rohingya brothers and sisters,” and much of the debate in the run-up to the trip focused on whether he would do so again in expressing solidarity with the Rohingya’s plight.