‘China endorses crackdown’

No links with terror: Rohingya militants

YANGON, Sept 14, (Agencies): China endorses Myanmar’s offensive against Rohingya Muslim insurgents, Myanmar state media said on Thursday, as the UN secretary-general described the operation, forcing nearly 400,000 people to flee to Bangladesh, as “ethnic cleansing”.

The Myanmar military offensive in the western state of Rakhine was triggered by a series of guerrilla attacks on Aug 25 on security posts and an army camp in which about a dozen people were killed.

“The stance of China regarding the terrorist attacks in Rakhine is clear, it is just an internal affair,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Thursday quoted China’s ambassador, Hong Liang, as telling top government officials.

“The counter-attacks of Myanmar security forces against extremist terrorists and the government’s undertakings to provide assistance to the people are strongly welcomed.”

But at the United Nations in New York, China set a different tone, joining a UN Security Council expresion of concern about reports of excessive violence and calling for immediate steps to end it. China competes with the United States for influence in Myanmar, which in 2011 began emerging from nearly 50 years of strict military rule and diplomatic and economic isolation.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration called for protection of civilians.

The violence in Rakhine and the exodus of refugees is the most pressing problem Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has faced since becoming national leader last year.

Suu Kyi is due to address the nation on Tuesday.

Critics have called for her to be stripped of her Nobel prize for failing to do more to halt the strife, though national security policy is in the hands of the generals whose junta previously ran the country.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council on Wednesday urged Myanmar to end the violence, which he said was best described as ethnic cleansing.

“When one third of the Rohingya population had to flee the country, could you find a better word to describe

involvement in Afghanistan as well as drone strikes in Pakistan. (AP)

Clooney raises fresh fears:

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney Wednesday raised fresh fears for the safety of her client, former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, after an official vowed to have him arrested and deported.

The London-based lawyer said she was

Moody

Violence

Clooney

it?” he told a news conference in New York.

The government says it is targeting “terrorists”, while refugees say the offensive aims to push Rohingya out of Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Numerous Rohingya villages in the north of Rakhine have been torched but authorities have denied that security forces or Buddhist civilians have been setting the fires. They blame the insurgents.

Meanwhile, Rohingya militants, whose raids in western Myanmar provoked an army crackdown that spurred a humanitarian crisis, denied any links to global terror groups on Thursday, days after al-Qaeda urged Muslims to rally to their cause.

Defend

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) says it is trying to defend the minority group from a long campaign of persecution in Buddhistmajority Myanmar, where the Rohingya are denied citizenship.

But its actions have plunged a region, already a crucible of religious and ethnic tension, deeper into crisis.

Rights group say Myanmar’s army has used the ARSA’s attacks as cover to try to push out the estimated 1.1 million Rohingya population.

Myanmar’s government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied the allegations.

It labels the militants as “extremist terrorists” who want to impose Islamic rule over a portion of Rakhine state.

They have also previously described the group as harbouring fighters who have trained with the Pakistani Taleban, ideas that have become the currency of arguments among the mainly Buddhist public for why the crackdown is justified.

Al-Qaeda on Tuesday urged Muslims around the world to support the Rohingya cause and “make the necessary preparations — training and the like — to resist this oppression” in a statement on Telegram.

ARSA has repeatedly distanced itself from the agenda of international jihad, instead insisting its claims are local and in defence of major state repression.

Meanwhile, Britain and Sweden on Wednesday urged the UN Security Council to call for an end to Myanmar’s military campaign in Rakhine state.

“very concerned” about remarks by Male’s ambassador-designate to Colombo, that he would have the exiled leader arrested if he set foot in Sri Lanka.

Clooney, who is married to Hollywood star George Clooney, had successfully petitioned a UN body which ruled in late 2015 that Nasheed was wrongfully convicted on a terrorism charge earlier that year and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also ordered the government of President Abdulla Yameen immediately to free Nasheed and pay him compensation, a demand rejected by the Maldives.

Nasheed travelled to London in January last year on prison leave for medical treatment and has since then remained in self-imposed exile. He travels frequently to Sri Lanka to meet fellow dissidents.

The new Maldivian envoy to Sri Lanka, Mohamed Hussain Shareef, told a local television station Monday that he would have Nasheed arrested in Colombo should he visit and would deport him. (AFP)