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Suu Kyi stance on Rohingya ‘indefensible’: Malaysia PM
SINGAPORE, Nov 13, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Aung San Suu Kyi’s response to the
persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims is “indefensible”, Malaysia’s
leader said Tuesday in a withering criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize
laureate shortly before sharing a stage with her.
Mahathir Mohamed, 93, said he was “very disappointed” by Suu Kyi’s failure
to defend the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority driven from Myanmar in
their hundreds of thousands last year by an army campaign that UN
investigators say amounted to genocide.
Mahathir made his remarks less than an hour before standing alongside Suu
Kyi for a stoney-faced photo shoot at the start of the ASEAN regional summit
in Singapore, the kind of diplomatic gathering where she was once feted by
contemporaries as a beacon of democracy.
“Someone who has been detained before should know the sufferings and should
not inflict it on the hapless,” Mahathir told reporters in a reference to Suu
Kyi’s long years of house arrest under Myanmar’s military junta.
“But it would seem that Aung San Sui Kyi is trying to defend what is
indefensible,” he added.
Suu Kyi has failed to clearly condemn Myanmar’s army for its crackdown and
has instead cast doubt on the veracity of Rohingya testimony of atrocities.
Mahatir, the outspoken leader of Malaysia — a majority Muslim country —
also appealed to Myanmar to accept Rohingya as citizens.
“When Malaysia became independent in 1957, we had people of foreign
origin…. but we accepted all of them,” he said.
“They are now citizens, they play a full role in the politics of the
country, they are free they are not detained because of race or any thing
like that.”
Myanmar insists the Rohingya are interlopers from Bangladesh despite many
living for generations in western Rakhine state and has long denied them
basic rights and liberties.
The Rohingya crisis has dulled the diplomatic niceties that traditionally
govern gatherings of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) which is meeting in Singapore this week.
The bloc tends to shy away from any direct criticism of each other and
promote consensus diplomacy.
But Mahathir has been much more willing to break with those diplomatic
traditions.
Defenders of Suu Kyi say she has little control over Myanmar’s military in
a country where the generals still have huge political power and
independence.
But critics say her failure to use her huge domestic appeal to publicly
castigate the generals or push for protection of the Rohingya makes her
complicit.
Suu Kyi’s arrival in Singapore came a day after Amnesty International
stripped her of its top award over her “indifference” to the atrocities
committed by the military against the Rohingya.
The first stage of a long-delayed and deeply controversial plan to
repatriate Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar is due to start on
Thursday – despite widespread opposition from rights groups to any forced
return.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1656 hrs