Myanmar's Suu Kyi seeks help from ASEAN leaders over Rohingya crisis

Burmese politician and diplomat, Aung San Suu Kyi, has reportedly sought help with the ongoing Rohingya crisis, from Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nations and Australia, in a closed-door meeting.

At a meeting of leaders at the Australia-ASEAN summit in Sydney on Sunday, Suu Kyi addressed the issue "comprehensively [and] at some considerable length," The Guardian quoted the Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as saying, reports ANI

"Aung San Suu Kyi ... seeks support from ASEAN and other nations to provide help from a humanitarian and capacity-building pointof-view. Everyone seeks to end the suffering," Turnbull said.Over 650,000 of the Rohingya ethnic and religious minority have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh since August, escaping systemic violence from the country’s military, including murder, rape and the deliberate torching of villages.

Suu Kyi has spoken little publicly about the conflict and pointedly refused to use the word Rohingya, which is not a minority recognised by the Myanmar government."It is not the intention of the Myanmar government to apportion blame or to abnegate responsibility. We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence," she had said earlier. ASEAN had a declared policy of non-interference in the affairs of member states but the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said the ongoing persecution of Rohingya was of international concern.

"Because of the suffering of Rohingya people and that of displacement around the region, the situation in Rakhine state and Myanmar can no longer be considered to be a purely domestic matter … because it has the potential of developing into a serious security threat to the region," The Guardian quoted Razak as saying.