Outrage over Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya Muslims is being fuelled by ‘a huge iceberg of misinformation’, defacto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said yesterday.
Her first comments on the scandal came after the UN led calls for her government to end violence that has forced 146,000 to flee to Bangladesh.
Rohingya refugees have poured into Bangladesh, fleeing a massive security sweep after a series of deadly ambushes there by Rohingya militants on August 25.
Suu Kyi’s government has faced growing international condemnation for the army’s response as refugees arrive with stories of murder, rape and burned villages at the hands of soldiers.
Myanmar’s state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi said that outrage over Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya Muslims is being fuelled by ‘a huge iceberg of misinformation’
Burned Rohingya houses are seen in Ka Nyin Tan village of suburb Maungdaw, northern Rakhine state of western Myanmar, on Wednesday. The Myanmar government said that the Rohingya villagers burned their homes down themselves
.Myanmar police stand as journalists who are part of a government organized media trip arrive in Buthidaung, northern Rakhine state of Myanmar
But in her first public comments since last month’s ambushes, she said sympathy for the Rohingya was being generated by ‘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’.
The comments were made in a statement from her office following a call with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been particularly critical of Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya, dubbing it a ‘genocide’.
But Suu Kyi said her administration was ‘defending all the people’ in Rakhine.
The statement highlighted a now-deleted tweet last week by Turkey’s deputy prime minister Mehmet Simsek showing a series of gruesome pictures of bodies he wrongly claimed were of dead Rohingya.
Hazuli, 38, second right, stands outside of the public school with her family where they are taking shelter after her family fled from the violence that broke out on August 25 in Maungdaw town, northern Rakhine state of Myanmar
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s top security adviser sought to counter the storm of criticism the government is facing from around the world over alleged army abuses against ethnic minority Rohingya, asserting that security forces were acting with restraint in pursuing ‘terrorists’
Supporters of both the Rohingya and Myanmar’s government have track records of posting emotive images that are not from the conflict.
Myanmar’s Rohingya are the world’s largest stateless minority and have lived under apartheid-like restrictions on their movement and citizenship for years.
They largely eschewed violence, but in October a new militant group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army launched a series of ambushes on border police, prompting a massive army-led crackdown.
More than 200,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since October.
That includes 146,000 in the last two weeks, piling huge pressure on an impoverished neighbour that already hosted 400,000 Rohingya who had fled Myanmar over the past four decades.
Indonesian Muslims hold placards showing Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi (R) reading ‘Pull out the Peace Nobel Prize’ and Myanmar nationalist Buddhist monk Biksu Ashin Wirathu (C) during a protest against the persecution of the Rohingya minority, in front of the Myanmar Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia