Burma's Suu Kyi plays down exodus, invites look

Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi delivers a televised speech to the nation at the Myanmar International Convention Center in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. After a mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims sparked allegations of ethnic cleansing, Suu Kyi said her country does not fear international scrutiny. (AP Photo)
Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi delivers a televised speech to the nation at the Myanmar International Convention Center in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. After a mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims sparked allegations of ethnic cleansing, Suu Kyi said her country does not fear international scrutiny. (AP Photo)

NAYPYITAW, Burma -- With a mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims sparking accusations of ethnic cleansing from the United Nations and others, Burma leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday said her country does not fear international scrutiny and invited diplomats to see some areas for themselves.

Though an estimated 421,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh in less than a month as their villages burned and hundreds were killed, Suu Kyi said the "great majority" of Muslims in the conflict zone stayed and that "more than 50 percent of their villages were intact."

The Nobel Peace laureate's global image has been damaged by violence since Rohingya insurgents attacked Burma security forces on Aug. 25. Rohingya fled their villages in the military crackdown that followed, and many of their villages have been burned. The government has blamed the Rohingya themselves, but members of the persecuted minority have said soldiers and Buddhist mobs attacked them.

Suu Kyi said anyone found to have broken the law would be punished.

The Rohingya, who live mainly in northern Rakhine state near the Bangladesh border, have had a long and troubled history in this predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million.

Though members of the long-persecuted religious minority first arrived in the western state of Rakhine generations ago, most people in Burma consider them to have migrated illegally from Bangladesh. Denied citizenship, they are effectively stateless.

The attacks on Rohingya villages in the past month appear to many to have been a systematic effort to drive them out. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has described it as ethnic cleansing.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Tuesday that her government was suspending training support for Burma's military over its treatment of the Rohingya.

Speaking in New York, May said "this military action needs to stop." She said "there will be no further defense engagement or military training" with Burma until the crisis ends.

Britain does not provide combat training to Burma's armed forces but has offered courses in English and topics such as democracy.

Satellite imagery released by Human Rights Watch on Tuesday shows swaths of scorched landscape and the near total destruction of 214 villages. Also Tuesday, a group that focuses on Rohingya rights said the attacks drove nearly all Rohingya out of one of the three northern Rakhine townships where the ethnic group is concentrated in Burma.

The Arakan Project found that almost every tract of villages in Maungdaw township suffered some burning. Most Rohingya villages in Rathedaung township also were targeted, but relatively few were hit in Buthidaung township.

Suu Kyi sought to assure foreign diplomats gathered for her speech in Naypyitaw, the capital, that those who fled to Bangladesh would be allowed to return if they passed a "verification" process. She also said the government was working to restore normalcy in the area.

Though fires have continued to flare in recent days in northern Rakhine state, she said "there have been no armed clashes and there have been no clearance operations" for the past two weeks.

Rohingya now in camps in Bangladesh were angered by the implication that Rohingya who were driven from their villages were themselves responsible, or that some members of the ethnic group are safe.

In the Kutupalong refugee camp, Abdul Hafiz said Rohingya once trusted Suu Kyi more than the military, which not only ruled for half a century before but also held her under house arrest for many years. Now Hafiz calls Suu Kyi a "liar" and says Rohingya are suffering more than ever.

He said Suu Kyi should give international journalists more access to their destroyed villages. If Rohingya are proved wrong that they were attacked, he said, "we will not mind if the world decides to kill us all by pushing us into the sea."

Chris Lewa, founder of the Arakan Project, said the government rules for verifying Rohingya as citizens are too strict, requiring documents dating back decades. "Many people would have lost their documents in the fires, and many children were already unregistered," she said.

Some observers who attended the speech said it was progress for Suu Kyi to invite diplomats to at least some Rohingya villages.

"Today's welcoming of the international community to travel to Rakhine and see for ourselves what the situation is, I think that is a positive statement," said Andrew Kirkwood of the U.N.'s Office for Project Services.

Russian and Chinese diplomats praised the speech. "The message is quite clear that Myanmar is ready to cooperate with the international community," said the Russian ambassador to Burma, Nikolay Listopadov.

Rights groups were far more critical. Amnesty International regional director James Gomez accused Suu Kyi of "a mix of untruths and victim-blaming."

The exodus continues to grow. The U.N.'s migration agency on Tuesday raised its estimate of the number of refugees in Bangladesh to 421,000, and UNICEF said more than a quarter-million of those are children. Hundreds of thousands more Rohingya were already in Bangladesh from waves of violence years earlier.

Information for this article was contributed by Robin McDowell, Julhas Alam and staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 09/20/2017

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