World has got it wrong on Burma ‘ethnic cleansing’ claims Suu Kyi
Defiant leader says reports of army purges are result of terrorist groups spreading ‘iceberg of misinformation’
AUNG SAN SUU KYI, Burma’s de facto leader, has lashed out at an “iceberg of misinformation” from “terrorists” – amid reports that the army has laced the border with Bangladesh with landmines to stop refugees fleeing the military from later returning home.
Nearly 150,000 civilians from the Rohingya Muslim minority have fled the north-west state of Rakhine to neighbouring Bangladesh over the past two weeks, bringing allegations of mass killings of civilians and the torching of their villages by Burmese security forces.
More than 400 have been killed, Burma officials say, but human rights activists claim that at least 1,000 have died. According to several reports, about 130 people, including women and children, were slaughtered in just one village, Chut Pyin.
The army “clearing operation”, which was sparked when Rohingya insurgents ambushed paramilitary checkpoints on Aug 25, could lead to genocide, warned a senior UN official yesterday.
“When they are being killed and forcibly transferred in a widespread or systematic manner, this could constitute ethnic cleansing and could amount to crimes against humanity,” said Adama Dieng, the UN special adviser for the prevention of genocide.
“In fact, it can be the precursor to all the egregious crimes – and I mean genocide,” he said.
Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, also joined the chorus of international concern about serious abuses against the Rohingya. “Civilians must be protected,” he tweeted.
Thousands of Indonesian Muslims chanting “Allahu akbar” protested in central Jakarta yesterday over Burma’s treatment of the Rohingya.
It was the fourth and biggest prorohingya demonstration over the past week in the Indonesian capital, the commercial centre of the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country.
But despite mounting criticism of her regime, particularly from outraged Muslim countries, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize winner who lived under house arrest for years and is a symbol of Burma’s democratic transition, has made no mention of the desperate plight of Rohingya civilians. Instead, she has blamed “terrorists” for
‘This could constitute ethnic cleansing and amount to crimes against humanity … and I mean genocide’
“a huge iceberg of misinformation calculated to create a lot of problems between different countries”. She made the accusation in a telephone conversathe tion on Tuesday with Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, who has accused Burma of genocide. In extracts from their conversation made public by her office, Ms Suu Kyi highlighted images of killings posted on Twitter by Turkey’s deputy prime minister that were later deleted as they were not from Burma, also known as Myanmar.
The government had “already started defending all the people in Rakhine in the best way possible”, she said. Fake news has been fuelled by the government’s denial of access to Rakhine state for independent observers.
Information is being relayed from witness accounts of exhausted refugees streaming across the border, and from phone evidence gathered by an extensive network of Rakhine-based activists. The absence of international monitors has allowed the army to easily deny atrocities.
Yesterday, a Burmese military source denied accusations from the Bangladeshi government that soldiers had been laying landmines along the border over the past three days.
Bangladesh has lodged an official complaint, accusing its Buddhist-majority neighbour of violating international norms.