SUU KYI FORCED TO MISS UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Myanmar leader under fire for ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Rohingya
Aung San Suu Kyi is to avoid the United Nations General Assembly next week as international condemnation mounts over ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya population in Myanmar.
As the de facto head of government and also Myanmar’s foreign affairs minister, she was expected to address the gathering of world leaders in New York, but yesterday her spokesman announced that the country’s vice president, Henry Van Thio, would instead attend the summit, which runs through next week.
The announcement, which came as the UN Security Council prepared to discuss the crisis at a meeting yesterday, followed increasing condemnation of her failure to intervene in the crisis.
On Monday the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said that recent military actions in northern Rakhine state, which have led to more than 370,000 Rohingya fleeing over the border into Bangladesh, appeared to be a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
At the UN yesterday, secretary general Antonio Guterres appeared to agree. Asked whether the crisis could be categorised as ethnic cleansing, Mr Guterres said: “A third of the [Rohingya] population had to flee the country – can you find a better word to describe it?”
He called on the international community to provide whatever assistance it could.
“The humanitarian situation it is catastrophic,” he said.
“When we met last week there was 125,000 Rohingya refugees who had fled to Bangladesh. That number has now tripled to nearly 380,000. Many are staying in makeshift settlements or with those communities who are generously sharing what they have. But women and children are arriving hungry and malnourished.”
The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar estimated that 1,000 people have died in the recent violence. Bangladesh says the figure could be as high as 3,000.
Myanmar’s neighbour – already a poor country – is struggling to cope with a huge influx of refugees in the past three weeks, with hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need of basic aid.
Fellow Nobel peace laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai, have all called on Ms Suu Kyi to stop the violence. Last week, however, she said the crisis was being distorted by a “huge iceberg of misinformation”.
Spokesman Zaw Htay yesterday said Ms Suu Kyi was needed in Myanmar to “manage humanitarian assistance” and “security concerns” caused by the violence.
The Nobel Peace Prize recipient has so far failed to speak publicly on the crisis and has been condemned by human rights groups for inflammatory declarations published by her information committee.
The Myanmar government has consistently denied-scale atrocities are being perpetrated against the Rohingya in the wake of August 25 attacks on security posts in Rakhine state by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Myanmar has declared the group a terrorist organisation and blames the insurgents and other Rohingya for large-scale arson attacks on their own communities.
When a previously unheard of Rohingya militant group struck border posts in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state last October, killing nine police officers, the full fury of the country’s military was released on the Muslim minority.
The group, named Harakah Al Yaqueen (Faith Movement), has since changed its name to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), at least when it is communicating with the international community.
While initial statements from the group mentioned the word “jihadi” in relation to defending the Rohingya people, it has since gone out of its way to declare it is not fighting for a religious cause, portraying its aims as “defence of the Rohingya people”.
Arsa has vowed not to target ethnic Rakhine civilians, saying its enemy is the Myanmar military. The group’s leader, a man believed to have been born into a Rohingya family in Pakistan who goes by the name of Ata Ullah, has tried to liken Arsa to other armed ethnic groups in Myanmar.
These organisations engaged in conflict with the Myanmar military include the Kachin Independence Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army.
But his comparisons have failed because of a conviction in the country that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They are not one of Myanmar’s 135 officially recognised ethnic groups.
After Arsa launched a round of attacks on security posts – hybrid police station-border checkpoints set up in Rohingya areas – on August 25, killing 12 security personnel and an immigration official, the Myanmar government declared it to be a terrorist organisation.
Access to northern Rakhine is restricted, making it impossible to independently verify reports, but it appears the group has been responsible for the death of a small number of civilians during recent fighting.
Clearer indications of Arsa’s willingness to perpetrate violence against civilians comes from the Rohingya community itself. In the months leading up to August 25, several dozen village chiefs and others were killed, many beheaded, apparently by the insurgents in revenge for alleged collaboration with Myanmar authorities.
Since the recent attacks, fleeing Rohingya have told the human rights group Fortify Rights that Arsa had allowed women and children to escape to Bangladesh, but was forcing men to stay to fight.
The size of the group remains unclear. An estimated 1,000 insurgents were reported to have taken part in the August 25 attacks.
The Myanmar military claims to have killed about 400 insurgents since then, but the army has also said it is difficult to distinguish between fighters and civilians, so it is unclear how many of the 400 were Arsa members.
Various sources in the Rohingya community said many of those involved in the recent attacks were young men who had fled Myanmar into Bangladesh after last October’s military reprisals, and they saw the group as the only hope of winning basic rights.
One young Rohingya man said educated people in his community feared Arsa and blamed it for sparking recent violence ,but that others thought armed action was their last chance of challenging the oppression.
International NGOs working in Rakhine suggest that the international community failed to recognise the group was gaining support. One Muslim rights activist described how “charismatic” Ullah is.
“The way he speaks, it’s like he’s a human rights advocate,” the activist said.
Yet some observers have accused Arsa of being part of a wider, sinister plot to provoke religious violence across South-East Asia.
According to a December 2016 International Crisis Group report, Arsa is backed by a “committee of Rohingya emigres in Saudi Arabia and is commanded on the ground by Rohingya with international training and experience in modern guerrilla war tactics”.
After the October 9 attacks, the Myanmar government said the group’s foreign funding appeared to come from individuals [mainly wealthy Rohingya in Saudi Arabia] rather than larger networks.
The ICG recently said claims of the group being backed by the likes of ISIL or Al Qaeda should be treated with “the utmost caution”.
“Rohingya communities have not typically been radicalised in this fashion and there are no indications that Arsa has been pursuing goals congruent with those of global jihadist outfits,” the ICG said.
“While there may be domestic political imperatives or gains to be had for politicians in the region to make these claims, doing so is deeply dangerous.”
Claims that Arsa is well funded by international militant Muslim organisations with links to terrorist groups are also undermined by the paucity of the group’s weapons, mainly knives and homemade explosives were used in recent attacks.
But observers have said the ongoing oppression and brutality against the Rohingya leaves them vulnerable to radicals seeking to exploit their cause.
There are no indications that Arsa has been pursuing goals congruent with those of global jihadist outfits INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP Conflict-resolution NGO