Pence confronts Suu Kyi on Rohingya crisis
US vice-president blasts the Burmese leader over persecution as return of Muslim refugees is halted
‘Returning refugees at this point effectively means throwing them back into the cycle of human rights violations’
MIKE PENCE, the US vice-president, confronted Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday over the “violence and persecution” of her country’s Rohingya Muslims.
Mr Pence, who was attending a Singapore summit in Donald Trump’s place, told Ms Suu Kyi, Burma’s de facto leader, that America was “anxious to hear the progress” she was making on the crisis. It came as Bangladesh appeared to drop plans to repatriate some of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees following international condemnation.
Mohammad Abul Kalam, Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner, initially said the country planned to return 150 refugees today despite aid agencies warning that their lives would be at “serious risk”. But the plans were dropped after it emerged none of the refugees on the repatriation list has so far volunteered to return to Burma.
More than 720,000, mostly Muslim, Rohingya fled Burma after a military crackdown was launched in August last year, joining some 300,000 already in Bangladesh. The US has accused the military of ethnic cleansing against the country’s Rohingya, who are widely reviled in Buddhist-majority Burma.
The Burmese army has claimed its forces have carried out counter-insurgency operations in Rakhine state, but Un-mandated investigators claim it was a campaign of killings, rape and arson with “genocidal intent”.
“The violence and persecution by military and vigilantes that resulted in driving 700,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh is without excuse,” Mr Pence told Ms Suu Kyi in public remarks at the Asia-pacific summit in Singapore.
“I am anxious to hear the progress that you are making of holding those accountable who are responsible for the violence that displaced so many hundreds of thousands and created such suffering, including the loss of life,” he added.
Mr Pence also pressed Ms Suu Kyi to pardon two Reuters journalists who were arrested last December while working on an investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim villagers. Ms Suu Kyi, who sat stony-faced next to Mr Pence, gave a curt response, telling him there were “different points of view” on the crisis.
Plans for repatriation had caused widespread alarm among the Rohingya community. Bangladesh insists only those who volunteer will be returned, but Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that many refugees are panicking at the prospect of being sent back. Many of those slated to be repatriated are reported to have gone into hiding within the camps at Cox’s Bazar, the district hosting a small refugee city.
Rohingya community leaders said that an increase in the number of Bangladeshi soldiers at the camps in recent days was stoking anxiety.
“With an almost complete lack of accountability, indeed with ongoing violations, returning refugees at this point effectively means throwing them back into the cycle of human rights violations that this community has been suffering for decades,” Ms Bachelet said.
Amnesty International yesterday called on both countries to “immediately halt” the repatriations.