Suu Kyi makes 1st visit to northern Rakhine

Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrived on her first visit to conflict battered northern Rakhine State on Thursday, an official said, an unannounced trip to an area that has seen most of its Rohingya Muslim population forced out by an army campaign. Ms. Suu Kyi, a nobel laureate who leads Myanmar’s pro-democracy party, has been hammered by the international community for failing to use her moral power to speak up in defence of the Rohingya.

SITTWE, MYANMAR/UNITED NATIONS, UNITED STATES/ COX’S BAZAR, BANGLADESH — Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrived on her first visit to conflict-battered northern Rakhine State on Thursday, an off icial said, an unannounced trip to an area that has seen most of its Rohingya Muslim population forced out by an army campaign.

Ms. Suu Kyi, a nobel laureate who leads Myanmar’s prodemocracy party, has been hammered by the international community for failing to use her moral power to speak up in defense of the Rohingya.

Some 600,000 of the stateless minority have fled to Bangladesh since late August carrying accounts of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar’s army, after militant raids sparked a ferocious military crackdown.

ETHNIC CLEANSING

The United Nations (UN) says that crackdown is tantamount to ethnic cleansing, while pressure has mounted on Myanmar to provide security for the Rohingya and allow people to return home.

“The State Counsellor ( Ms. Suu Kyi’s off icial title) is now in Sittwe and will go to Maungdaw and Buthidaung too. It will be a day trip,” government spokesman Zaw Htay told AFP, mentioning two of the epicenters of the violence but without elaborating on her schedule.

It is her first trip in office to northern Rakhine, which has seen some of the worst of the communal violence that has cut through the western state since 2012, severely damaging Myanmar’s global reputation.

It was not clear if Ms. Suu Kyi would visit some of the hundreds of Rohingya villages torched by the army — allegedly aided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist locals — or if she would be taken to see remaining clusters of the Muslim group, who are living in fear and hunger surrounded by hostile neighbors.

Thousands of others are believed to still be camped on a beach near Maungdaw awaiting boats to Bangladesh in increasingly parlous conditions.

UN PRESSED TO SPEAK OUT

Muslim countries led by Saudi Arabia want the UN to denounce serious rights abuses in Myanmar and demand an end to the military campaign against the Rohingya, according to a draft resolution seen by AFP on Wednesday.

The draft resolution introduced this week to the General Assembly’s human rights committee said UN member- states were “highly alarmed” by the outbreak of violence and “further alarmed by the disproportionate use of force by the Myanmar forces” against the Rohingya.

The non- binding measure is expected to come up for a vote in the committee around Nov. 14 and be discussed in the assembly a month later.

Drafted by the 57- member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the proposed resolution marks the return of Myanmar to the rights agenda at the United Nations after a one-year break.

Last year, the European Union (EU) decided against presenting a measure criticizing Myanmar’s rights record for the first time in 15 years after recognizing progress under Ms. Suu Kyi’s leadership. —