YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military has ended a
clearance operation in the country's troubled Rakhine state, government
officials said, ending a four-month sweep that the United Nations said may
amount to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.
The security operation had been under way since nine
policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border
on Oct 9. Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have since fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh,
according to UN estimates.
The violence has renewed international criticism that
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has done too little to help members of the
Muslim minority.
The government led by Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has denied
almost all allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine, including mass
killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims, and said the operation was a
lawful counterinsurgency campaign.
"The situation in northern Rakhine has now
stabilised. The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased,
the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain
the peace," newly-appointed national security adviser Thaung Tun was
quoted as saying in a statement released by State Counsellor's Office late on
Wednesday.
"There can be no excuse for excessive force, for
abuses of fundamental human rights and basic criminality. We have shown that we
are ready to act where there is clear evidence of abuses," he told a group
of diplomats and UN representatives in a meeting, according to the statement.
Two senior officials from Myanmar's President Office and
the Ministry of Information confirmed that the army operation in northern
Rakhine had ended but said the military force remained in the region to
maintain "peace and security".
Myanmar military did not immediately respond to requests
for comments.
The military and police have separately set up a team to
investigate alleged crimes after Suu Kyi promised to probe UN allegations of
atrocities against the Muslim minority.
More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in
the crackdown, two senior UN officials dealing with refugees fleeing the
violence told Reuters last week.
A Myanmar presidential spokesman has said the latest
reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people had been
killed in the counterinsurgency operation.
Rohingya Muslims have faced discrimination in
Buddhist-majority Myanmar for generations. They are regarded as illegal
immigrants from Bangladesh, entitled only to limited rights and some 1.1
million of them live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar.