Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has made her first visit to the conflict-battered northern state of Rakhine, a previously unannounced trip to a region that has been almost emptied of its Rohingya Muslim population fleeing army attacks.

The Nobel laureate has been criticised by the international community for failing to speak up in defence of the Rohingya, a long-persecuted minority in majority-Buddhist Myanmar.

Accompanied by about 20 people travelling in two military helicopters – including army, police and state officials – Aung San Suu Kyi met remaining Rohingya residents, local media reported. Images posted on social media showed the leader speaking to villagers.

Some 600,000 people have fled to Bangladesh in two months, carrying accounts of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar’s security forces, who say they are responding to militant raids on August 25.

The UN says that crackdown is tantamount to ethnic cleansing, and pressure has mounted on Myanmar to provide security for the Rohingya and allow people to return home.

“The state counsellor [her official title] is now in Sittwe and will go to Maungdaw and Buthiduang too. It will be a day trip,” government spokesman Zaw Htay told Agence France-Presse earlier on Thursday, mentioning two of the centres of the violence but without elaborating on her schedule.

Chris Lewa, a Rohingya rights activist outside from the Arakan Project monitoring group, said the leader stopped her car at one point to speak to locals.

“She only said three things to the people - they should live peacefully, the government is there to help them, and they should not quarrel among each other,” Lewa said, citing a Rohingya religious leader who was present.

It was not clear if Aung San Suu Kyi would visit some of the more than 200 Rohingya villages torched by the army – allegedly aided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist locals – or if she would be taken to see remaining Rohingya, who are living in fear and hunger surrounded by hostile neighbours.

Thousands of others are believed to still be camped on a beach near Maungdaw awaiting boats to Bangladesh in increasingly parlous conditions.

The Rohingya, widely hated by Myanmar’s Buddhist population, are denied citizenship and dismissed as illegal “Bengali” immigrants by many government officials.

For years, tens of thousands paid people smugglers to get them out the country on dangerous sea voyages. But the current bloodshed has displaced the vast majority of the remaining population, many of them poor rice farmers.Life for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, many with bullet wounds and burns, is deteriorating inside makeshift and overcrowded camps amid funding shortfalls.

Aid groups say the risk of significant outbreaks of disease is high.

The European commissioner Christos Stylianides visited the camps this week and said the conditions were “beyond imagination”.

“[The] Rohingya are nothing less than every other human being in the world. This [situation] is, especially for the European Union and also for me personally, appalling,” he was quoted as saying by the Dhaka Tribune after a two-day visit.

Aung San Suu Kyi has set up a committee tasked with repatriating Rohingya from Bangladesh, but aid workers fear the displaced may end up forcibly interned.

On Wednesday, a Myanmar government spokesman, Zaw Htay, accused Bangladesh of delaying the start of the repatriation process.

Several observers have explained Aung San Suu Kyi’s choice not to criticise the army as a means to avoid a backlash from generals who still hold significant power, controlling the interior and defence ministries. Businessman Zaw Zaw, who was formerly sanctioned by the US Treasury for his ties to Myanmar’s junta, was with her on the trip.

Other analysts say “The Lady” – as she in known – has made a political decision not to publicly support a minority that is despised by her electoral base.

Aung San Suu Kyi has not suggested either theory is correct. She has defiantly backed the army, responding to international condemnations by saying “no one can fully understand the situation of our country the way we do”.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

Bron:
Holmes, O. (2017, November 2). Aung San Suu Kyi makes first visit to site of anti-Rohingya violence. Opgehaald van The guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...hingya-violence

Eigen mening:
Dit bezoek lijkt mij meer bedoeld om ons (het klagende westen) te sussen in plaats van de Rohingya te helpen. Wat ze tegen deze Rohingya zegt klinkt ook eerder alsof ze de schuld bij hen wil leggen. 'Jullie moeten vredevol leven, want dat doen jullie nu nog niet. De regering is hier om jullie te helpen, dus het leger zal wel een reden hebben voor deze massamoorden. Vecht niet onderling, want jullie zijn ruziestokers.'.

En ja, ik begrijp dat het moeilijk is om kritiek te hebben op het leger als de generaals zo veel macht hebben. Dit is echter haar taak als leider. Zij is een belangrijk figuur met veel invloed. Als iemand tegen het leger in zou moeten gaan, is zij het. Neen, het lijkt mij dat zij eerder sympathiseert met de extremistische boeddhisten dan met de lijdende moslims.

Om alles nog wat erger te maken heeft zij dan ook nog eens een nobelprijs voor vrede gekregen. Dit zorgt ervoor dat men de nobelprijzen niet meer serieus kan nemen. Eigenlijk zouden ze pas uitgereikt mogen worden als de persoon al gestorven is. Zo kan er alvast heel wat minder fout lopen in die categorie.