Rohingya crisis: We don't fear global scrutiny, says Aung San Suu Kyi

Suu Kyi: After half a century or more of authoritarian rule, now we are in the process of nurturing our nation

Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday said her country "does not fear international scrutiny" over the ongoing Rohingya Muslim refugee crisis and was "aware of the fact that the world's attention is focused on the situation in Rakhine state".

She made the remarks in her first national address on the ongoing violence in Rakhine that has seen 415,000 Rohingya Muslims flee into Bangladesh, reports CNN.

"After half a century or more of authoritarian rule, now we are in the process of nurturing our nation.

"It is not the intention of the Myanmar government to apportion blame or to abdicate responsibility. We condemn all human rights violation and unlawful violence.

"We are committed to the restoration of peace, stability and rule of law throughout the state," Suu Kyi said in front of a packed auditorium of Myanmar government officials and high ranking militarily personnel here.

Responding to the UN labelling the Myanmar Army's actions as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing", Suu Kyi said that her government still needed to find out "what the real problems are".

"There have been allegations and counter-allegations. We have to listen to all of them. We have to make sure those allegations are based on solid evidence before we take action.

"We want to find out why this exodus is happening. We'd like to talk to those who have fled, as well as those who have stayed," CNN quoted the de-facto leader as saying.

The Rohingya refugees have fled since the ongoing violence broke out on August 25 when Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) rebels attacked police checkposts and killed 12 security personnel.

In her speech, Suu Kyi the Nobel Peace Prize winner for her non-violent resistance to the military junta that used to rule Myanmar, did not mention the Rohingya specifically and only used the term in reference to the "Rohingya Salvation Army" which she claimed was "responsible for acts of terrorism".

Suu Kyi said the violence is just one of many complexities her nascent democracy faces, likening it to a sick person who needs to be treated for multiple ailments.

"We are a young and fragile country facing many problems, but we have to cope with them all... We cannot just concentrate on the few."

Suu Kyi said she was making this speech because she was unable to travel to the UN General Assembly later this week, reports the BBC.

She said she wanted the international community to know what was being done by her government to address the situation.....READ MORE

Rohingya crisis a great opportunity for India to set its house in order

India should come out of its policy bottleneck where every act of its generosity is for immediate self-aggrandisement rather than long-term gain.

If India fails to stand with the Rohingya today, will it be able to claim tomorrow that it is rightfully with the people of Baluchistan or Tibet?

If a nation’s resilience is tested by its response to the crisis in its surroundings, then India isn’t the super power it tries to project itself as. A superpower must have enough will to, as Uncle Ben suggested to Spiderman, take “great responsibility,” and should not just assemble state-of-the-art artilleries to flex in its Republic Day parades.

India’s typical response to the Rohingya crisis shows that it still has to build a moral compass to navigate its foreign policy and its foreign policy has hardly changed since the 1990s, even superficially, in the manner in which it deals with urgent humanitarian crises in its neighbourhood and beyond. Like now, India, in the 1990s, had failed to defend the rights of the Bhutanese people of Nepalese origin when they were chased out by the royal government. It even gave tacit support to the Bhutanese royalty by ignoring several appeals by human right groups and activists. The Bhutanese refugee crisis wasn’t an out of the blue thing but a build-up of a series of events since 1988 when Bhutan conducted its southern population census targeting its Nepalese population. With the census, Bhutan re-classified several thousands of its citizens as illegal migrants.

Going further, it introduced several repressive measures including its ‘One Nation, One People’, or Driglam policy, wherein the Nepalese population were forced to wear the northern traditional dress and adopt the culture of majority. It removed the Nepali language from the curriculum of schools. Bhutanese’s refugee activist Tek Nath Rijhal’s Torture Killing Me Softly is a grueling account of the period of his suffering in Bhutan’s prison for raising concerns over the plight of these Nepalese.....READ MORE