UK foreign minister meets Suu Kyi over plight of Rohingya

Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, stopped off in Myanmar to press Aung San Suu Kyi on the need for an independent probe into violence in Rakhine state, as the country faces mounting pressure to punish troops accused of atrocities against the Muslim Rohingya.

Johnson met the embattled Myanmar leader, whose reputation in the international community has crumbled over her handling of the Rohingya crisis, in the capital, Naypyidaw, on Sunday while on a four-day tour in Asia.

The meeting followed Johnson’s visit to a refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, where nearly 700,000 Rohingya have sought sanctuary after fleeing a Myanmar army crackdown launched in northern Rakhine last August.

The UN has accused Myanmar security forces of driving the Muslim minority across the border in an ethnic cleansing campaign. Doctors Without Borders estimates at least 6,700 Rohingya died in the first month of violence. But Myanmar has staunchly denied the charges and blocked UN investigators from the conflict zone, souring relations with western allies.

Fresh reports of mass graves in Rakhine and the arrest of two Reuters journalists investigating an alleged massacre have heightened pressure on Suu Kyi to condemn the army, with which she is in a delicate power-sharing arrangement. But the Nobel laureate has refused to change tack. On Sunday Johnson and Suu Kyi “discussed in an open and friendly manner the latest developments in Rakhine state, including planning for the reception of returnees who fled”, Myanmar’s foreign ministry said in a Facebook post alongside photos of the pair meeting.

Johnson wrote on Twitter that he raised the “importance of [Myanmar] authorities in carrying out full and independent investigation into the violence in Rakhine”. He said he also stressed the “urgent need to create the right conditions for Rohingya refugees to return to their homes in Rakhine”.

Myanmar and Bangladesh have inked a deal to bring back refugees, but repatriation has yet to begin.

Many Rohingya do not feel safe returning to a country where they have faced persecution and decades of discrimination at the hands of a state that has denied them citizenship.

Others have no home to return to after their villages were torched.

After months of denying abuses by its troops, Myanmar’s military admitted in January that security officers had assisted in killing 10 Rohingya men in Rakhine’s Inn Din village.

That public admission followed the arrests of two Myanmar journalists who were investigating the massacre and are now facing up 14 years in prison on charges of possessing secret documents.

Johnson was scheduled to fly to Bangkok later on Sunday for a visit that is scheduled to include meetings with junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha and the Thai chairman of an advisory board on the Rohingya crisis.

The panel was thrown into the spotlight in January after veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson published a withering resignation letter saying he could not in “good conscience” sit on a board he feared would only “whitewash” the crisis.

THE MYANMAR LEADER’S REPUTATION IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HAS CRUMBLED