Suu condemns abuse but mum on Army’s role
Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday she does not fear global scrutiny over the Rohingya crisis, pledging to hold rights violators to account but refusing to blame the military for violence that has driven some 421,000 of the Muslim minority out of her country.
In an address timed to preempt likely censure of Myanmar at the UN General Assembly in New York and delivered entirely in English and aimed squarely at an international audience, she called for patience and understanding of the unfurling crisis in her "fragile democracy".
She also vowed to resettle some refugees but offered no solutions to stop what the UN calls army-led "ethnic cleansing" in the Rakhine state, where soldiers are accused of burning Muslim Rohingyas in their homes.
But UN human rights investigators were not convince and said they needed "full and unfettered" access to Myanmar to investigate the grave and ongoing crisis; the demand was immediately rejected. Rights group Amnesty International said the Nobel peace laureate was "burying her head in the sand" over documented army abuses and claims of rape, murder and the systematic clearing of scores of villages.
Supporters and observers say the 72-year-old lacks the authority to rein in the military, which ran the country for 50 years and only recently ceded limited powers to her civilian government.
"She is trying to claw back some degree of credibility with the international community, but without saying too much that will get her in trouble with the (military) and Burmese people who don't like the Rohingyas in the first place," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch.
Communal violence has torn through Rakhine state since Rohingya militants staged deadly attacks on police posts on August 25. An army-led fightback has left scores dead, and sent hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingyas fleeing Buddhist Myanmar into Bangladesh. In her 30-minute speech Suu Kyi reached out to critics who have condemned her failure to speak up for the stateless Rohingyas.
Myanmar stood ready she said, to repatriate refugees in accordance with a "verification" process agreed with Bangladesh in the early 1990s.
"Those who have been verified as refugees from this country will be accepted without any problems," she added.
In less than a month just under half of Rakhine's one-million-strong Rohingya minority has poured into Bangladesh, where they languish in overcrowded refugee camps. It was not immediately clear how many would qualify to return.
Suu Kyi insists army "clearance operations" finished on September 5. But AFP reporters have seen homes on fire in the days since then, while multiple testimonies from refugees arriving in Bangladesh suggest those operations have continued.