Pope: My Defence of Rohingya Got Through in Myanmar
Pope Francis on Saturday defended his strategy of avoiding the term “Rohingya” in Myanmar, saying he believed he got his message across to both the civilian and military leadership without shutting down dialogue. Speaking to reporters aboard the plane returning to Rome from Bangladesh, the pontiff also indicated that he had been firm with Myanmar’s military leaders in private meetings about the need for them to respect the rights of Rohingya refugees.
He also disclosed that he cried when he met a group of Rohingya refugees on Friday in Bangladesh, where he defended their rights by name in an emotional meeting. “For me, the most important thing is that message gets through, to try to say things one step at a time and listen to the responses,” he said.
“I knew that if in the official speeches I would have used that word, they would have closed the door in our faces. But (in public) I described situations, rights, said that no one should be excluded, (the right to) citizenship, in order to allow myself to go further in the private meetings,” he said. Pope Francis did not use the word Rohingya in public while on the first leg of the trip in Myanmar. Predominantly Buddhist
Myanmar does not recognise the mostly Muslim Rohingya as an ethnic group with its own identity but as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Local Roman Catholic Church authorities had advised him not to say it because it could spark a backlash against Christians and other minority groups.
The Pope met Myanmar’s military leaders privately on Monday, shortly after his arrival in the nation’s biggest city, Yangon.
The meeting had been scheduled on Thursday, but the military pointedly asked at the last minute that it be pushed forward. The result was they saw the pope before the civilian leaders instead of the other way around, as had been planned.
Non-negotiable truths
“It was a good conversation and the truth was non-negotiable,” he said of his meeting with the military leaders.
The latest exodus from Myanmar to Bangladesh of about 625,000 people followed a Myanmar military crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and Police posts on August 25.
Refugees have said scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, people were killed and women were raped. The military have denied accusations of ethnic cleansing by the United States and United Nations.
Asked if he used the word Rohingya during the private meeting with the military chiefs, the pope said: “I used words in order to arrive at the message and when I saw that the message had arrived, I dared to say everything that I wanted say”.
He then gave a reporter a mischievous grin and ended his answer with the Latin phrase “Intelligenti Pauca,” which means “Few words are enough for those who understand,” strongly hinting that he had used the word the military detests while in their presence.