Suu Kyi faces mounting world anger over Rohingya

UNITED NATIONA (AFP) - Aung San Suu Kyi faced mounting criticism Tuesday over what some world leaders are now calling the “ethnic cleansing” of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, despite her plea for patience from the international community.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has issued a new call for Myanmar to take back the some 420,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in the Buddhist-dominated country.

Hasina, speaking to Bangladeshi activists in New York where she is attending the UN General Assembly, also called for greater international pressure on Myanmar over the new crisis which has unfolded in the past three weeks, media reports said.

‘’We have told Myanmar, they are your citizens, you must take them back, keep them safe, give them shelter, there should not be any oppression and torture,’’ she told a meeting late Tuesday in New York.

The head of Myanmar’s civilian administration pledged to hold rights violators to account over the crisis in Rakhine state, but refused to blame Myanmar’s powerful military for the attacks that have driven 421,000 Muslim Rohingya out of her mainly Buddhist country.

But her speech, delivered in English and clearly aimed at deflecting international anger as world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, failed to quell international anger at reports that the Rohingya are being burned out of their homes.

“The military operation must stop, humanitarian access must be guaranteed and the rule of law restored in the face of what we know is ethnic cleansing,” French President Emmanuel Macron told world leaders gathered for the week of high-level diplomacy.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged both the government and the military “to address deeply troubling allegations of human rights abuses and violations.”

Macron and Tillerson’s concerns echoed those of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who issued a blunt demand that Myanmar halt military operations and of Britain, which suspended training courses for the Myanmar military in light of the violence in Rakhine.

“They must also address the grievances of the Rohingya, whose status has been left unresolved for far too long,” Guterres said.

In her long-anticipated speech, Suu Kyi – a former political prisoner and Nobel Peace laureate who won international acclaim for her role in campaigning for a return to elected rule in Myanmar – failed to offer any concrete way out of the crisis.