Suu Kyi vows to rebuild violence-hit Rohingya homes

YANGON: Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi paid her first visit to restive northern Rakhine state, meeting Rohingya Muslim villagers who remained behind while half a million others were driven out by the army.

Pictures published by local media showed Suu Kyi, who rules as state counsellor, talking to Rohingya residents of Maungdaw district, one of the areas worst hit by the violence.

She visited the village of Pan Taw Pyin, one of hundreds where homes were burned, and promised it would be rebuilt, a Rohingya resident told dpa.

“She said we will build the homes… we will provide houses and necessaries,” the resident said, adding local authorities had selected certain villagers to talk to Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi has been strongly criticised internationally for failing to condemn the military, which has allegedly committed mass rape, arson and killings since violence began in August.

Speaking to dpa yesterday, government spokesman Zaw Htay said the state counsellor’s visit would last a day and would cover the state capital, Sittwe, as well as the conflict-hit north.

Some Rohingya remain in northern Rakhine state, in villages where residents have said they are starving and prohibited from leaving to buy food from local markets.

Myanmar has barred UN agencies from working in the area, although the Red Cross has had limited access.

More than 600 000 Rohingya, members of a long-persecuted minority who are not recognised as citizens, are now believed to be in squalid refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

One in four children there are suffering from acute malnutrition, the charity Save the Children said yesterday.

Doctors have said they have treated children with injuries from rape.

But Aung San Suu Kyi has said little about the causes of the exodus, saying in a speech in September that she “did not know” why Rohingya were fleeing.

She also said she wanted to talk to those who had not left.

Her government is negotiating with the Bangladesh government on terms of repatriation of the Rohingya, most of who say they do not want to return to Myanmar unless they are given citizenship.

Despite tracing their history in the country back generations, Rohingya are widely deemed illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and had their citizenship revoked in the early 1980s. – dpa

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrives in Sittwe, in Rakhine state, Myanmar, yesterday. Suu Kyi made her first visit as Myanmar’s leader to the conflict-torn region where more than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled state-led violence that has...