In her first public statement on the conflict in Rakhine State since it erupted nearly two weeks ago, de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said her government has been working to protect people in the region but made made no mention of the humanitarian catastrophe that has driven an estimated 123,600 Rohingyas over the border into Bangladesh.
The comments were part of a statement released by the Office of the State Counsellor released early this morning. They were excerpts from a phone call Aung San Suu Kyi held with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
“We know very well, more than most, what it means to be deprived of human rights and democratic protection. So we make sure that all the people in our country are entitled to protection of their rights as well as, the right to, and not just political but social and humanitarian defense,” Suu Kyi told Erdoğan during the call.
She also stressed that the Myanmar government “has already started defending all the people in Rakhine in the best way possible.”
Suu Kyi also used the call to urge to Erdoğan not to fall prey to fake news about the situation in Rakhine State.
“There should be no misinformation to create trouble between the two countries which have [had] good, friendly relations for a long time,” Suu Kyi said, hinting at a series of photos tweeted on August 29 by Turkish deputy prime minister Mehmet Simsek along with a message reading: “There is a massacre against Rohingya Muslims. Stop turning a blind eye to ethnic cleansing in Arakan Myanmar.”
Simsek later deleted the tweet when it was pointed out that the photos were not taken in Myanmar.
Suu Kyi told the Turkish president that the photos were “simply the tip of a huge iceberg of misinformation calculated to create a lot of problems between different communities and with the aim of promoting the interest of the terrorists.”
According to the State Counsellor’s Office, President Erdoğan said he is confident that Aung San Suu Kyi, “as a leader who has faced and overcome challenges and [an] advocate of human rights will approach the situation with [a] vision of a long term solution to the issue of Rakhine.”
The risk of ethnic cleansing
On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Myanmar authorities to end the violence against Rohingya communities in Rakhine State, calling the situation a “humanitarian catastrophe” that risks destabilizing the region. He also called on the Security Council to press the Myanmar government to exercise restraint.
When asked by reporters if the violence could be described as ethnic cleansing, Guterres told reporters: “We are facing a risk, I hope we don’t get there.”
In addition to the nearly 125,000 Rohingyas who have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, thousands more are internally displaced, as are thousands of Buddhists and Hindus who live in Rakhine State. Over 400 people are thought to have been killed in the clashes between the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and Myanmar security forces.
Myanmar has also reportedly been laying landmines along its border with Bangladesh. Two government sources in Dhaka told Reuters that this may be to prevent the return of Rohingyas into Myanmar.
Bangladesh is expected today to formally protest Myanmar’s use of landmines so close to the border.
A Myanmar military source told Reuters that the landmines were laid along the border in the 1990s and that none have been lain recently.
