Aung San Suu Kyi: 'I don't fear global scrutiny' over Rohingya crisis

Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi delivers a televised speech to the nation
AP
Tom Powell19 September 2017

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has publicly defended her country over the Rohingya refugee crisis which has seen more than 400,000 Muslims flee across the border.

Violence erupted over a week ago when the government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, claimed it was cracking down on insurgents following an attack on police.

But the Rohingya communities accused security officials and Buddhist mobs of burning their villages down – leaving them forced to flee across the border to Bangladesh.

Ms Suu Kyi, the state counsellor and a Nobel Peace laureate, has had her global image damaged by the crisis.

People gather to listen to the live speech of Aung San Suu Kyi
AFP/Getty Images

However, in her first public address since the violence broke out, she said she did not fear “international scrutiny”.

She claimed that many villages were still intact, most Muslims had not fled the state and the violence had ceased.

She said: "We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence. We are committed to the restoration of peace and stability and rule of law throughout the state,"

She added that she wanted to speak to Muslims who had fled and others who had stayed in order to get to the root of the crisis.

Her address came after a human rights organisation warned Rohingya Muslims were being wiped off the map in Myanmar.

The Arakan Project, which works to improve conditions for the ethnic minority, is documenting attacks on the three townships in the northern Rakhine state where Rohingya are concentrated.

Rohingya: an estimated 400,000 have fled across the border
REUTERS

It found that almost every tract of villages in Maungdaw had suffered some burning, and that all of Maungdaw had been almost completely abandoned by Rohingya.

A human rights group, Fortify Rights, said that witnesses who escaped have supported accusations by Rohingya advocates that government security personnel and civilian vigilantes "committed mass killings of Rohingya Muslim men, women and children in Chut Pyin village, Rathedaung township, on August 27".

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