Suu Kyi wants careful handling of Rohingya
In rare comments on Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslims, Opposition
Leader Aung San Suu Kyi urged caution on granting citizenship to
minorities, saying the sensitive issue must be addressed “very, very
carefully.”
Most persecuted
The Myanmar Government is reviewing citizenship status and “should go
about it very quickly and very transparently and then decide what the
next steps in the process should be,” she told The Washington Post.
But in an interview published, Suu Kyi dodged a direct question on
whether the Rohingya – who have triggered international outcry as they
flee the country on rickety boats in their thousands – should be given
citizenship. “The protection of rights of minorities is an issue which
should be addressed very, very carefully and as quickly and effectively
as possible, and I’m not sure the government is doing enough about it,”
she said.“It is such a sensitive issue, and there are so many racial and
religious groups, that whatever we do to one group may have an impact on
other groups as well,” she stressed.“So this is an extremely complex
situation, and not something that can be resolved overnight.”
The plight of the Rohingya, one of the world’s most persecuted
minorities, has worsened dramatically since 2012, when communal
bloodshed left scores dead and some 140,000 people confined in miserable
camps in Rakhine State.
The violence triggered a wave of deadly anti-Muslim unrest in Myanmar
and coincided with rising Buddhist nationalism that has further
entrenched animosity toward the minority widely viewed as illegal
immigrants from Bangladesh.
In recent months, images of starving, desperate migrants hauled from
vessels to Southeast Asian shores have spurred calls for immediate
humanitarian action. But pro-democracy icon and Nobel peace laureate Suu
Kyi, who became a beacon of hope during decades of house arrest under
the military junta, has been accused of failing to speak up for the
country’s powerless as she campaigns for elections due in November. “We
have many minorities in this country, and I’m always talking up for the
right of minorities and peace and harmony, and for equality,” she told
the Post, speaking after a landmark visit to China. And she insisted in
Rakhine “the government has not done enough to lessen the tension and to
remove sources of the conflict.”
Appetite
Buddhist hardliners want the estimated 1.3 million Rohingya expelled
from Myanmar. And neither the government nor opposition parties have
shown much appetite to confront communal tensions for fear of alienating
Buddhist voters ahead of the polls. Suu Kyi’s National League for
Democracy (NLD) party is expected to sweep the elections, but she is
barred from the presidency under a constitutional provision excluding
those with a foreign spouse or children from the top job.Suu Kyi, whose
husband was British, told the Post she believed “the government is
totally opposed to constitutional amendment” that could pave the way to
the presidency. After long being an international pariah due to the
military junta, Myanmar has embarked on a series of reforms bringing it
back into the diplomatic fold.“We do worry that the reforms will turn
out to be a total illusion, and we think that we need more concrete
steps to ensure that the democratization process is what it was meant to
be,” Suu Kyi added.
(AFP)
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