Myanmar State Counsellor and Aung San Suu Kyi has earned worldwide condemnation for not denouncing the ongoing military persecution of the Rohingya in Rakhine state in her televised speech to the nation on Tuesday.
The United Nations, rights groups, and a tide of Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh have accused Myanmar's military of using bullets and arson to wage an "ethnic cleansing campaign" against the ethnic minority group.
In her speech, Suu Kyi expressed sympathy for the 'suffering of all people' swept up in the violence but did not address the accusations of ethnic cleansing by Myanmar's security forces.
She, instead, said anyone guilty of rights abuses would be brought to justice.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International said the de facto leader of Myanmar and her government were “burying their heads in the sand" over the violence in Rakhine state, reported AFP.
"Aung San Suu Kyi today [Tuesday] demonstrated that she and her government are still burying their heads in the sand over the horrors unfolding in Rakhine state. At times, her speech amounted to little more than a mix of untruths and victim blaming," Amnesty said.
The watchdog also criticised Suu Kyi's call for international observers to visit Myanmar to assess its troubles for themselves, citing her government's blocking of a UN fact-finding mission to probe alleged army atrocities in Rakhine.
"Aung San Suu Kyi's claims that her government 'does not fear international scrutiny' ring hollow... If Myanmar has nothing to hide, it should allow UN investigators into the country, including Rakhine state," Amnesty said.
Referring to Suu Kyi's assertion that military operations had ended on September 5, Phil Robertson, deputy director of Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, said: “If that is true, then who is burning all the villages we've seen in the past two weeks?”
He further said satellite images showed about half of all Rohingya villages had been torched and it was time that Suu Kyi, the government and the military faced the fact that the security forces “don't follow a code of conduct and shoot and kill who they want”, al Jazeera reported.
Rohingya refugees currently residing at the camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district called her a “traitor” for not denouncing the army for the atrocities they had committed against the Rohingya.
“Suu Kyi is a traitor. We can't rely on her words,” said Sultan Ahmed, who arrived in Cox's Bazar two weeks ago.
Abdul Hafiz, another refugee, was angered by Suu Kyi's implication that Rohingya were themselves responsible for their plight.
“They have kept people in confinement [in Rakhine]. Let the world media know from them [international observers] whether we are tortured or living in joy," he told Associated Press.
Analysts said Suu Kyi had made a political calculation that speaking out more strongly on the Rohingya would have cost her support within the country.
“She's no longer a peace campaigner, she's evolved and transitioned into a full-time politician,” Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy and author of “The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar's Hidden Genocide,” told CNN.
Penny Green, a professor of law at Queen Mary University of London who studies the Rohingya conflict, told CNN that Suu Kyi's speech was "disingenuous" and "filled with underlying denials" that she said was "typical of the way in which state criminals behave."
BBC News journalist Jonah Fisher said Suu Kyi was either completely out of touch or wilfully blind to the realities of what her army was up to in Rakhine.
“It is simply not credible to say we don't know why more than 400,000 Rohingya have fled. The evidence is being gathered every day in the testimony of refugees,” he said. “To say as she did that 'all people in Rakhine state have access to education and healthcare without discrimination' is simply wrong.”
Thursday, April 25, 2024
