Myanmar\u2019s U.N. ambassador insisted Monday that there is no \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d or genocide taking place against Muslims and objected \u201cin the strongest terms\u201d to countries that used those words to describe the situation in Rakhine State.<\/p>\n
Hau Do Suan used his \u201cright of reply\u201d at the end of the six-day gathering of world leaders at the General Assembly to respond to what he called \u201cirresponsible remarks\u201d and \u201cunsubstantiated allegations\u201d repeated by countries in their speeches to the 193-member world body.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t identify any of the nations, though many spoke out about the plight of more than 420,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgent attacks on security forces prompted a military crackdown and reprisals by majority Buddhists.<\/p>\n
Among those who accused Myanmar of trying to rid itself of Rohingya were Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra\u2019ad al-Hussein, and a number of Islamic countries, including the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
Suan denied those claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no ethnic cleansing. There is no genocide,\u201d he said. \u201cThe leaders of Myanmar, who have long been striving for freedom and human rights, will not espouse such policies. We will do everything to prevent ethnic cleansing and genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called the issue of Rakhine State \u201cextremely complex\u201d and urged U.N. member states and the international community \u201cto see the situation in northern Rakhine objectively and in an unbiased manner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pointing to the initial attack by the insurgent Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, known as ARSA, he said: \u201cIt is the responsibility of every government to fight against terrorism and protect innocent civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ambassador said there are several reasons for the exodus and \u201cprominent among them is the fear factor.\u201d Following the Aug. 25 attacks and the security operation, he said, \u201cmost of the women and children were forced to flee\u201d while men were conscripted into ARSA to fight Myanmar\u2019s security forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Myanmar\u2019s U.N. ambassador insisted Monday that there is no \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d or genocide taking place against Muslims and objected \u201cin the strongest terms\u201d to countries that used those words to describe the situation in Rakhine State. Hau Do Suan used his \u201cright of reply\u201d at the end of the six-day gathering of world leaders at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[870,871],"class_list":{"0":"post-80","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-genocide-against-rakhine-muslims-myanmar","9":"tag-no-ethnic-cleansing"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","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=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}