TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Suu Kyi set to break silence on Rohingya crisis
Change Size
This file photo taken on June 16, 2012 shows Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi delivering her Nobel speech during the Nobel ceremony at Oslo's City Hall. Aung San Suu Kyi's global image is in tatters over her stubborn refusal to protect the Rohingya -- but her stance has been widely applauded inside Myanmar where hatred (Agence France-Presse/Daniel Sannum Lauten)
M
yanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi was poised Tuesday to break her silence on a refugee crisis the UN has decried as "ethnic cleansing", in a live TV address that will be closely watched by nationalists in Myanmar who support an army-led campaign against Rohingya Muslims.
Communal violence has torn through Rakhine state since August 25, leaving hundreds dead and driving more than 410,000 of the Rohingya minority from Myanmar into Bangladesh.
But Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, has so far refused to speak up for the stateless Rohingya or publically urge restraint from the military.
Her intransigence in the face of huge international pressure has confounded a global community that once feted her as the champion of Myanmar's democracy struggle.
But inside Myanmar, supporters say the 72-year-old lacks the power to pull in the army, with whom she is in a delicate power-sharing arrangement.
The UN has accused Myanmar's army of "ethnic cleansing" over a campaign of alleged murder and arson that has left scores of Rohingya villages in ashes.
The army denies that, instead insisting its operations are a proportional response to the late August raids by Rohingya militants, who they label "extremist Bengali terrorists".
Since then just under half of Rakhine's Rohingya population has poured into Bangladesh, where they now languish in one of the world's largest refugee camps.
A further 30,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists as well as Hindus have also been displaced -- apparent targets of the August 25 attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salavation Army (ARSA) militant group.
Suu Kyi skipped this week's 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.
Hours before her speech, British Foreign Secretary called a meeting on the sidelines of the UN gathering, warning that the Rakhine violence was "a stain on the country's reputation" so soon after its transition to democratic rule.
