Myanmar’s UN ambassador Hau Do Suan responded to accusations of ethnic cleansing by several world leaders at the UN General Assembly on Monday by calling these claims “irresponsible remarks” and “unsubstantiated allegations.”
“There is no ethnic cleansing. There is no genocide,” he said. “The 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.”
Among the leaders who accused Myanmar ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya were Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, and several Muslim-majority countries, including the United Arab Emirates. French president Emmanuel Macron even referred to Myanmar’s actions as “genocide” in a TV interview on the sidelines of the General Assembly.
Hau Do Suan urged the foreign leaders to see the Rakhine situation as “extremely complex” and to view it “objectively and in an unbiased manner.”
Focusing attention on the attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on August 25, the ambassador said: “It is the responsibility of every government to fight against terrorism and protect innocent civilians.”
He also sought to correct the notion that Muslims deserve recognition as a minority in Myanmar, saying: “In the affected area of northern Rakhine, [the] Muslim community is not a minority as widely reported. In reality, they are a majority, as their population has increased. They now constitute 95 percent of the total population in the area.”
He explained the flight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya over the border to Bangladesh as the result of several causes, including “the fear factor” and “the scorched-earth policy employed by the terrorists.”
“The terrorists planted IEDs everywhere, blew up bridges, and committed arsons,” he said.
Counter to the ambassador’s claims, rights groups, including Amnesty International, have collected evidence of an “orchestrated campaign of systematic burnings” by Myanmar security forces against Rohingya villages. Video, satellite photos, and witness accounts analyzed by the group suggest that over 80 sites have been burned, some of which were Muslim villages that were torched as recently as Friday.
The UN Security Council is scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss the violence in Myanmar. The meeting will include a briefing from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the crisis.
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