Restoring minority rights is biggest challenge for Suu Kyi

THE decade long persecution to the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar did not come to an end despite Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi took over the steering of the new democratic government in last April. The latest ethnic cleansing and genocide began last week in the troubled Rakhine state on Bangladesh border as the government forces flared up violence and ordered about two thousand villagers to abandon their ancestral homes while 15,000 were already thrown out of their land. Meanwhile over hundred Rohingyas were killed and the violence continues.

It is noticeable that the violence returned after a slow down in recent times as a high powered commission jointly headed by Myanmar State Counsel Aung Sun Suu Kyi and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is working to find out ways and means how to heal the wounds of bitter ethnic fight between minority Muslims and Buddhists and restore peace. Kofi Annan visited the Rakhine state last month to open the trust building initiative but rivals of the peace initiative of Suu Kyi appears to have strike back to defeat her move. They were even agitating in presence of Kofi Annan asking him to leave.
 
We want stability to return in the Rakhine state, where both Rohingyas and Buddhists must live in peace and harmony. Most Rohingya people are now homeless; over 120,000 living in temporary government shelters within the country. Many have also taken shelter in Bangladesh across the border adding to our domestic problems. But enemies of peace and Suu Kyi’s initiative to end the decade old violence; which was flared up by the former military junta on domestic political reasons would not let it work. Meanwhile, Rohingyas remain the most neglected people at a time when Syrian refugee crisis is dominating the global politics.

It appears that ultranationalist Buddhists are out to defeat the peace initiative having been promoted with support of the international community under the close watch of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Suu Kyi has also opened negotiations with other ethnic rebel groups fighting the Myanmar government over the past decades for autonomy and host of other reasons. But the Rohingyas as ethnic Muslim minority in the country have been severely discriminated, stripped off their citizenship and basic human rights making them stateless. They are treated as illegal migrants from nearby areas now Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi has to accept that to ensure democratic rights of ethnic minorities is her biggest challenge as a leader of democracy movement in Myanmar. She is aware of it and that is why she took the initiative to have the UN Commission.

We are fully supportive to her plan for national reconciliation but fresh breaking of ethnic killing and deportation of Rohingyas is troubling us again.