Army chief calls for unity over Rohingya ‘issue’

Myanmar’s army chief has urged the country to unite over the “issue” of the Rohingya, a Muslim group he says has no roots in the country, and which his troops are accused of systematically purging.

The military says its “clearance operations” in northern Rakhine state are aimed at taking out Rohingya militants who attacked police posts on August 25.

But the violence has engulfed the border region and triggered an exodus of more than 400,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh, where they have told of soldiers slaughtering civilians and burning down entire villages.

United Nations (UN) leaders have described the campaign as having all the hallmarks of “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya, a stateless group that has endured years of persecution and repression.

The status of the Muslim minority has long been an explosive topic in Myanmar, where many in the Buddhist majority view the group as foreign interlopers from Bangladesh and deny the existence of a Rohingya ethnicity, insisting they be called “Bengalis”.

Myanmar’s civilian leader, former democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, has also been castigated for failing to voice sympathy for the Rohingya — a group she has asked her government to refer to only as “Muslims of Rakhine state”. The Nobel laureate is set to address the nation on the crisis for the first time tomorrow, a high-stakes speech that many outside the country hope will explain her near silence on the human tragedy that is unfolding.