Pope meets Myanmar army chief amid Rohingya crisis
Today, the pope will meet Aung San Suu Kyi, whose lustre has faded because of her failure to speak up for Rohingya
Pope Francis met Myanmar’s powerful army chief yesterday at the start of a sensitive trip to the majority-Buddhist country, which is under fire internationally for a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.
The first pope to travel to Myanmar, he received Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing at the archbishop’s residence in Yangon, where the pontiff will stay during his visit.
The UN and US accuse the army, which the general controls, of ethnic cleansing in a campaign that has driven more than 620,000 Rohingya from Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state into neighbouring Bangladesh since August.
The military clampdown on the Rohingya looms large over the pope’s four-day trip. He has called the persecuted minority his “brothers and sisters” in repeated entreaties to ease their plight.
During a 15-minute meeting the pontiff, 80, and the army chief spoke of the “great responsibility of the country’s authorities in this moment of transition”, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said.
Myanmar was ruled by a junta for five decades until a government led by Aung San Suu Kyi came to power last year.
Pope Francis was welcomed at Yangon’s airport yesterday by children from different minority groups, who gave him flowers and received a papal embrace in return.
Nuns were among the devotees waving flags as his motorcade swept past the golden Shwedagon Pagoda.
“I saw the pope. I was so pleased, I cried,” said Christina Aye Aye Sein, 48, after the pope’s convoy received a warm but modest welcome. “His face looked very lovely and sweet. He is coming here for peace.”
Myanmar’s 700,000 Roman Catholics make up just more than 1 per cent of the country’s 51 million people.
But 200,000 Catholics are pouring into Myanmar’s commercial capital, Yangon, for an open-air mass tomorrow.
The pope’s speeches during his visit will be scrutinised by Buddhist hardliners for any mention of the word Rohingya, an incendiary term in a country where the Muslim group are reviled and labelled Bengalis – alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Today, Pope Francis will meet Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner whose lustre has faded because of her failure to speak up publicly for the Rohingya.
Speaking before he left Rome, the pontiff said: “I ask you to be with me in prayer so that, for these peoples, my presence is a sign of affinity and hope.”
The army insists its Rakhine operation was in response to Rohingya terrorists who raided police posts in August, killing at least a dozen officers.
But rights groups, the UN and the US have accused the military of using its operation as cover to drive out a minority it has oppressed for decades.
The flood of refugees arriving in Bangladesh have told of murder, rape and arson by troops and Buddhist mobs.
Inside Myanmar, opinion differs from the rest of the world.
“If the pope did weigh in on this issue, it would inflame tensions and public sentiment,” said political analyst Richard Horsey in Myanmar.