Suu Kyi sidesteps refugee abuse claims

NAY PYI TAW: Aung San Suu Kyi said yesterday she does not fear global scrutiny over the Rohingya crisis, pledging to hold rights violators to account and resettle some of the 410,000 Muslims who have fled army operations in her country.

But she offered no substantial solutions to stop what the UN calls “ethnic cleansing”. Amnesty International said the Nobel peace prize winner was “burying her head in the sand” by ignoring army abuses.

Communal violence has torn through Rakhine state since Rohingya militants staged deadly attacks on police posts on Aug 25. Hundreds have been killed and hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya driven out of mainly Buddhist Myanmar into Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi has been criticised by the international community for failing to speak up publicly for the stateless Rohingya or to urge restraint on the military. In a 30-minute televised speech yesterday she reached out to her critics, deploying the soaring rhetoric that once made her a darling of the global rights community.

In an address timed to pre-empt likely censure at the UN General Assembly in New York, she said Myanmar stood ready to repatriate refugees in accordance with a “verification” process agreed with Bangladesh in the early 1990s. In less than a month, just under half of Rakhine’s onemillion-strong Rohingya minority has poured into Bangladesh, where they now languish in one of the world’s largest refugee camps. Those verified as refugees will be “accepted without any problems and with full assurance of their security and access to humanitarian aid”, Suu Kyi said.

The subject of their claims to live in Myanmar is at the heart of a toxic debate about the Muslim group, who are denied citizenship by the state and considered to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Myanmar’s government has previously said it will not take back people linked with “terrorists” and suggested many of those who fled had set fire to their own villages before leaving.

Suu Kyi’s pledge to repatriate the refugees “is new and significant”, said Richard Horsey, an independent analyst based in Myanmar, saying it would in principle allow for the return of those who can prove residence in Myanmar — rather than citizenship. “However, there continues to be a live crisis in the north of Rakhine,” he said.

In an address delivered entirely in English, Suu Kyi insisted army “clearance operations” finished on Sept 5 without any further militant attacks.

Fresh satellite date published by Human Rights Watch yesterday purportedly shows 214 Rohingya villages in ashes, while testimony from refugees arriving in Bangladesh suggests army operations have continued.

Amnesty International, which once tirelessly campaigned for Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest, pilloried her speech saying “The Lady” and her government are “burying their heads in the sand” about the horrors unfolding in Rakhine.