Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi reached out to the global community Tuesday in a broad appeal for support over a refugee crisis the UN has decried as \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d, urging outsiders to help her nation unite across religious and ethnic lines and offering a pathway back to the country for some of the Rohingya Muslims forced to flee by army operations.<\/p>\n
Communal violence has torn through Rakhine state since 25 August leaving hundreds dead and driving more than 410,000 of the Rohingya minority from Myanmar into Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, has been decried for failing to speak up publicly for the stateless Rohingya or urge restraint from the military.<\/p>\n
But in 30-minute televised speech Tuesday she reached out to her critics, deploying the soaring rhetoric that once made her a darling of the global rights community.<\/p>\n
\u201cHate and fear are the main scourges of our world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want Myanmar to be a nation divided by religious beliefs or ethnicity… we all have the right to our diverse identities.\u201d<\/p>\n
While expressing her sorrow for \u201call\u201d groups displaced by violence, she said her country stood ready \u201cat any time\u201d to take back refugees subject to a \u201cverification\u201d process.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear how many of the estimated 410,000 Rohingya who have fled Myanmar would qualify to return.<\/p>\n
But the subject of their claims to live Myanmar is at the heart of a toxic debate about the Muslim group.<\/p>\n
Myanmar\u2019s army has previously it will not take back people linked with \u201cterrorists\u201d-suggesting many came from the hundreds of Rohingya villages that have subsequently been burnt to the ground.<\/p>\n
Inside Myanmar, supporters say the 72-year-old lacks the power to rein in the army, with whom she is in a delicate power-sharing arrangement.<\/p>\n
The UN has accused Myanmar\u2019s army of \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d over a campaign of alleged murder and arson that has left scores of Rohingya villages in ashes.<\/p>\n
The army denies that, insisting its operations are a proportional response to the late August raids by Rohingya militants, who they label \u201cextremist Bengali terrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n
Since then just under half of Rakhine\u2019s Rohingya population has poured into Bangladesh, where they now languish in one of the world\u2019s largest refugee camps.<\/p>\n
A further 30,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists as well as Hindus have also been displaced-apparent targets of the 25 August attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) militant group.<\/p>\n
Suu Kyi skipped this week\u2019s UN General Assembly in New York to manage the crisis at home and deliver her televised address-the biggest yet of her time in office.<\/p>\n
Siege mentality<\/p>\n
Analysts say Suu Kyi must walk a treacherous line between global opinion and Islamophobic anti-Rohingya views at home, where the military has curdled hatred for the Muslim minority.<\/p>\n
While stories of weary and hungry Rohingya civilians streaming into Bangladesh have dominated global headlines, there is little sympathy for the Muslim group among Myanmar\u2019s Buddhist majority.<\/p>\n
Many reject the existence of a Rohingya ethnicity and insist they are \u201cBengalis\u201d-illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
That narrative has justified the denial of citizenship for the estimated one million Rohingya who lived in Rakhine before the recent crisis.<\/p>\n
Loathing for the Rohingya has brought the public, including prominent pro-democracy activists, into an unlikely alignment with an army that once had them under its heel.<\/p>\n
A siege mentality has emerged in Myanmar with the UN, international NGOs and foreign media the focus of ire for apparent pro-Rohingya bias.<\/p>\n
Many Facebook users changed their profile picture on Tuesday to carry a banner with a photo of \u2018The Lady\u2019 and saying \u201cWe stand with you Daw Aung San Suu Kyi\u201d-using an honorific.<\/p>\n
Tensions over the status of the Rohingya have been brewing for years in Myanmar, with bouts of anti-Muslim violence erupting around the country as Buddhist hardliners fan fears of an Islamic takeover.<\/p>\n
Although the military stepped down from outright junta rule in 2011, it kept control of security policy and key levers of government.<\/p>\n
Any overt break from the army\u2019s policy in Rakhine could enrage the generals and derail Suu Kyi\u2019s efforts to prevent a rollback on recent democratic gains.<\/p>\n
Observers say the military may be deliberately destabilising her government with one eye on 2020 elections.<\/p>\n
Commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing has emerged during the crisis as an unexpectedly popular figure, pitching himself as a defender Myanmar\u2019s territorial integrity and the Buddhist faith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi reached out to the global community Tuesday in a broad appeal for support over a refugee crisis the UN has decried as \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d, urging outsiders to help her nation unite across religious and ethnic lines and offering a pathway back to the country for some of the Rohingya<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[846,847,848],"class_list":{"0":"post-38","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-glance","9":"tag-speech-at-a","10":"tag-suu-kyis"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}