DEMOCRACY CHAMPION ACCUSED OF REPRESSION
Myanmar leader calls reports of anti-Muslim violence ‘fake news’
Myanmar’s Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is under siege from critics around the world who say the pro-democracy Peace Prize winner is guilty of the very repression she spent decades combating.
The de facto leader of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, fought back Tuesday by calling reports of genocide against the country’s Rohingya minority in Rakhine state “fake news” and the “tip of a huge iceberg of misinformation.”
Her comments during a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were Suu Kyi’s first statements about the violence that erupted in northwestern Rakhine on Aug. 25.
The Rohingya are stateless Muslims in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country that has long been hostile to their presence. There are about 1 million Rohingya in Myanmar, where they are not recognized by the government as an official group and are denied citizenship.
According to the United Nations, nearly 125,000 Rohingya have fled in recent weeks to neighboring Bangladesh, a mostly Muslim nation, to escape a military crackdown and vigilante attacks that have burned villages and killed hundreds.
A group of Rohingya militants attacked police outposts and a military base, killing a dozen officers. The military responded with coordinated attacks.
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based rights organization, analyzed satellite data from Rakhine that it said showed the burn- ing of several villages.
Suu Kyi said “fake news” and photographs of the crisis in Rakhine were used to promote the interest of “terrorists.”
She claimed during the call that her government was working to protect the rights of the Rohingya.
“We know very well, more than most, what it means to be deprived of human rights and democratic protection,” Suu Kyi said. “So we make sure that all the people in our country are entitled to protection of their rights.”
Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy party swept to a landslide victory in national elections in 2015, ending decades of dictatorship under Myanamar’s military, but she was barred under the constitution from becoming the official leader because her late husband and children are foreign-born.
The military is still a powerful force in the country.
The backlash against Suu Kyi is a reversal for a revered international figure who spent 15 years under house arrest and was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.”
An online petition calling for the Nobel Committee to revoke her Peace Prize has received more than 350,000 supporters.
Tuesday, fellow Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, who won the 2014 Peace Prize for promoting women’s education in her native Pakistan, called on Suu Kyi to speak up for the Rohingya.
“Over the last several years, I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment. I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same,” Yousafzai wrote on Twitter. “The world is waiting and the Rohingya Muslims are waiting.”
U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sent a letter Tuesday to Suu Kyi asking her to adhere to human rights obligations over the growing humanitarian crisis. He called the latest incidents a “systematic campaign of violence against the Rohingya people that may amount to crimes against humanity” and asked Suu Kyi to allow the U.N. Human Rights Commission access to the region.
In a rare earlier comment about the Rohingya, Suu Kyi said in a BBC television interview in April, “I don’t think there is ethnic cleansing going on” against the ethnic minority. “I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening.”
An online petition calling for the Nobel Committee to revoke Aung San Suu Kyi’s Peace Prize has received more than 350,000 supporters.