UNSC team meets Suu Kyi to discuss Rohingyas

Naypyidaw, April 30: Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi received a UN Security Council delegation Monday in the highestlevel diplomatic visit since the start of the Rohingya crisis, which will include a brief tour of violence- hit Rakhine state.

Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of mainly Buddhist Myanmar, has been pilloried overseas for her failure to speak up for the Muslim Rohingya or publicly condemn the army for driving them out of the country.

On Monday afternoon she chaired a meeting of 15 UN delegates, according to a Ministry of Information photograph, as the UN tries to put more pressure on Myanmar to allow refugees to return safely.

The UN delegates will travel by helicopter Tuesday over the scarred landscape of northern Rakhine state, the scene of an army campaign starting last August that drove around 700,000 of the minority into neighbouring Bangladesh.

Their visit to Myanmar comes after an emotionallycharged stay in Bangladesh where Rohingya refugees told delegates of their trauma.

As they left Bangladesh, delegates said they would press Myanmar to ensure the safe return of those who fled.

“This is a humanitarian crisis and a human rights issue,” Kuwait’s ambassador to the UN, Mansour al- Otaibi, told reporters before flying to Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw.