A senior Myanmar
government official on Tuesday denied there was ethnic cleansing against
Rohingya Muslims in the troubled northwestern state of Rakhine, where a
military operation aimed at the minority has forced 75,000 people to flee to
Bangladesh.
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Myanmar National
Security Advisor Thaung Tun meets
heads of diplomatic missions and UN agencies
in
Myanmar in Yangon on the Rohingya crackdown,
in Yangon, Myanmar April 11,
2017. REUTERS/Stringer
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Attacks on Myanmar
border guard posts in October last year by a Rohingya insurgent group ignited
the biggest crisis of country leader Aung San Suu Kyi's year in power.
A UN report in
February said Myanmar's security forces had committed mass killings and gang
rapes against Rohingya during their campaign against the insurgents, which may
amount to crimes against humanity.
The military has
denied the accusations, saying it was engaged in a legitimate
counter-insurgency operation.
Thaung Tun, a
recently appointed National Security Adviser, reiterated the claim made by
Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi during a recent interview when she said
"ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is
happening".
"There is no
ethnic cleansing of Muslim minority in Rakhine," Thaung Tun told a group
of diplomats in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon. "It is a matter of people
on different sides of the divide and the government is striving to overcome the
situation and to close the gap."
His comments come
amid several ongoing investigations into the allegations, including one
mandated by Suu Kyi's government and chaired by the vice-president and former
head of military intelligence, Myint Swe.
Last month, the top
UN human rights body agreed to send an international fact-finding mission to
investigate the allegations - a move that Myanmar has opposed.
While the UN
February report stopped short of explicitly labeling the actions of the
security forces as ethnic cleansing, it said the violence committed against the
Rohingya "has been described in other contexts" as ethnic cleansing.
It also expressed
"serious concerns" that the attacks were a result of a
"purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by
violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or
religious group from certain geographic areas".
Thaung Tun said the
government needed time and space to address the issues and "where there is
clear evidence of wrongdoing, we will take firm action in accordance with the
law".
He added the
government had initiated the process of closing down some of the camps where
tens of thousands of Rohingya internally displaced people have lived since
clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012, but did not provide any
specifics of what is likely to be an extremely complex process.
(Reporting by Antoni
Slodkowski; Editing by Nick Macfie)