Aung San Suu Kyi denies ethnic cleansing of Rohingya
MYANMAR - Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has denied security forces carried out ethnic cleansing of the country’s Rohingya Muslims, despite the UN and human rights groups saying a crackdown by the army may amount to crimes against humanity.
Tens of thousands of people have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state since the military began a security operation last October in response to what it says was an attack by Rohingya armed men on border posts, in which nine police officers were killed. A UN report in February said the army’s campaign targeting the Rohingya involved mass killings, gang rapes and the burning down of villages, likely amounting to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. In neighboring Bangladesh, where more than 75,000 Rohingya have fled to escape the crackdown, people have recounted grisly accounts of horrendous army abuse, including soldiers allegedly executing an eightmonth-old baby while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers. “What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother’s milk,” UN rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said in a statement at the time. “What kind of ‘clearance operation’ is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?”
Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate whose international star as a rights defender is waning over the treatment of the Rohingya, has not condemned the crackdown, and has not spoken out in defense of the persecuted minority. Instead, she has called for space to handle the issue in a country where the more than one million Rohingya are not recognized as an ethnic minority and widely vilified as “illegal” immigrants from Bangladesh - even though many have lived in Buddhistmajority Myanmar for generations.
(aljazeera.com)