Myanmar leader criticised over treatment of Rohingya Muslims

SINGAPORE // Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed on Wednesday to work for “peace and national reconciliation” amid mounting international condemnation of a bloody army crackdown on her country’s Muslim Rohingya minority.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner who holds a specially created post of state counsellor, did not mention the violence in Rakhine state, but told a business forum in Singapore that multi-ethnic Myanmar needed to achieve stability to attract more investment. However, that was not enough to fend off strong criticism from other leaders in the region, with a senior Malaysian minister calling for Myanmar’s membership of the Association of Southeast Asian national (ASEAN) to be reviewed because of its “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Malaysia’s youth and sports minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the 10-nation association’s principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of member states was void in the context of such violence.

“To ASEAN, we demand that Myanmar’s membership in ASEAN be reviewed,” the minister told the annual gathering of the ruling party United Malays National Organisation. “The principle of non-interference is void when there is large scale ethnic cleansing in an ASEAN member state.”

A video highlighting the plight of the Rohingya was played during the minister’s speech, as he added, “Let us raise our hands in prayer to Allah for the deliverance of the Rohingya people from injustice and from ruin. ”

Ms Suu Kyi started a three-day visit to wealthy Singapore, the largest foreign investor in Myanmar after China, as international pressure mounted on her government to address the Rohingya crisis. The army of Myanmar has carried out a bloody crackdown in the western state of Rakhine, sending thousands of Rohingya flooding over the border into Bangladesh, making horrifying claims of gang rape, torture and murder at the hands of security forces.

According to the United Nations, at least 10,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh in recent weeks and altogether an estimated 30,000 Rohingya have been forced to leave their homes.

Bangladesh has stepped up patrols on the border but that has not deterred thousands from entering the country, many with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

“Based on reports by various humanitarian agencies, we estimate that there could be 10,000 new arrivals in recent weeks,” said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency in Bangkok. “The situation is fast changing and the actual number could be much higher.”

Rohingya community leaders in Bangladesh said another 3,000 displaced Rohingya were stranded on an island in the Naf river that divides the two countries

But a spokesman for the Bangladesh border guards said the claims could not be verified as the island was not Bangladeshi territory.

Shinji Kubo, who heads the UN refugee agency in Bangladesh, said the new arrivals needed “urgent” help. “Obviously these people have come from Myanmar after terrible experiences and without any belongings. The winter is approaching. So everyone is really worried about their well-being,” he said.

More than 230,000 Rohingya are already living in Bangladesh, most of them illegally, as only around 32,000 are formally registered as refugees.

The arrival of former UN head Kofi Annan in Myanmar this week — with the intention of visiting Rakhine — coincided with the UN’s human rights agency declaring that the Rohingya might be classed as victims of crimes against humanity.

Myanmar has denied allegations of ill-treatment, claiming the army is hunting the “terrorists” responsible for recent raids on police posts. But no foreign journalists or independent investigators are allowed into the area to investigate and analysis of satellite images by Human Rights Watch found hundreds of buildings in Rohingya villages have been razed.

Criticism of predominantly-Buddhist Myanmar’s treatment of the Muslim Rohingya has intensified in Muslim-majority neighbours Indonesia and Malaysia. Ms Suu Kyi was scheduled to visit Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, after Singapore but postponed the trip in the face of public protests and a thwarted bomb plot against the Myanmar embassy. Last Friday, Kuala Lumpur summoned the Myanmar ambassador while around 500 Malaysians and Rohingya marched to the embassy in the Malaysian capital carrying banners denouncing the “genocide.” The office of the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, also announced he would take part in a rally on Sunday to protest against the violence in Myanmar.

Thousands of Myanmar nationals also fled into China this month after clashes broke out between the army and ethnic rebels in northern Shan state, home to one of the many long-running insurgencies rumbling in Myanmar’s borderlands.

“As you know, we have many challenges. We’re a country made of many ethnic communities, and we have to work at achieving stability and rule of law which you in Singapore take pride in,” Ms Suu Kyi told the Singapore forum. “Businesses do not wish to invest in countries which are not stable. We do not wish to be unstable but we’ve had a long history of disunity in our nation. So national reconciliation and peace is unavoidably important for us.”

Singapore is the largest foreign investor in Myanmar after China.

* Agence France-Presse