Rohingya News Agency-(gulf-times): Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said yesterday that she alone could not stop the anti-Muslim violence that has shaken her country and that the solution was to install the rule of law. “It’s not something that I could learn to do, but I think what this whole society has to strive to do,” the democracy icon told reporters in Warsaw during a tour of central Europe. “We need rule of law in order that our people may feel secure and only secure people can talk to one another and try to establish the kind of relationship that will assure harmony for the future of our nation.” Suu Kyi was answering a question from a reporter who asked if she personally could do anything to stop the sectarian violence. While she is venerated for her struggle for democracy, some international human rights activists have accused the Nobel Peace laureate of failing to clearly condemn anti-Muslim violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Sectarian clashes in the western state of Rakhine last year left about 200 people dead, mostly Rohingya Muslims who are denied citizenship. Suu Kyi, 68, was speaking after having lunch with Polish anti-communist firebrand Lech Walesa. The fellow Nobel Peace laureate was leader of the Solidarity trade union, which negotiated a bloodless end to communism in Poland in 1989. The following year he became Poland’s first democratically elected president since World War II. Walesa, 69, said he thought Myanmar would one day achieve democracy like Poland. “Before we achieved success, we lost a couple battles,” he said. “They are in a similar situation: they’re losing some battles. But on balance they will probably win the war.” Suu Kyi, who has said she will run for president in 2015, stressed the need to amend Myanmar’s current constitution, which she said “is against all democratic values”. The document was crafted under the former military regime and blocks anyone, like Suu Kyi, whose spouses or children are foreign nationals from leading the country. Warsaw’s mayor announced she was making Suu Kyi an honorary citizen of the city, a distinction only offered to one other foreigner, the Dalai Lama. Earlier yesterday , Suu Kyi met with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Bronislaw Komorowski. Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest under military rule in Myanmar, before she was freed after controversial elections in 2010. She is now an opposition lawmaker as part of sweeping reforms under a new quasi-civilian regime that took office in 2011. The democracy icon next heads to Hungary and the Czech Republic. More than 200 Muslim Rohingya boat people have landed in southern Thailand, authorities said yesterday, a possible sign that vessels from Myanmar are risking the journey before the end of the monsoon season. The group, believed to be fleeing sectarian violence in unrest-torn Rakhine State, western Myanmar, landed on a remote beach during a storm in southern Satun province on Wednesday, an official said. “We gave them water, food and fixed their boat,” the official from the local Internal Security Operation Command, who did not want to be named, said, adding the group then returned to the boat and set sail. “We want them to go away out of the country... They do not want to stay here and authorities here do not want to take them”, he said, adding the Rohingya normally want to head on to neighbouring Muslim countries. While he did not mention any countries by name, the Rohingya generally prefer to aim for Malaysia or Indonesia. Thousands of Muslim Rohingya boat people—including women and children—have fled the former junta-ruled country since Buddhist-Muslim clashes a year ago in Rakhine. But most make the perilous journey after the monsoon has waned in October when high seas calm. A local village official confirmed late Wednesday that the group had made land in Satun province, after a 15-day voyage through rough seas. “They are all men—aged between 15 and 45-years-old... they looked skinny, they had no energy—some could not even walk,” Somnuk Khunsueksaid, adding they wanted to reach Malaysia. Thailand has faced criticism from rights groups for detaining hundreds of Rohingya boat people in overcrowded and insanitary facilities while it waits for a “third country” to offer to take them. But overseas help has not been forthcoming so far, leaving the refugees in limbo, and separated from their families. The kingdom initially said the asylum-seekers would be allowed to stay for six months while the government worked with the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, to try to find other countries willing to accept them. It has extended the deadline to early next year, but rights groups say the Rohingya remain vulnerable to exploitation while they do not have full legal status in the kingdom. In January Thai authorities opened an investigation into allegations that army officials were involved in trafficking Rohingya.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 06:04:45 +0000
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