Yahoo News
Vice President Mike
Pence on Wednesday pressed Myanmar’s military to end its violent campaign
against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority and urged the U.N. Security
Council to respond forcefully to the resulting humanitarian crisis in Southeast
Asia.
“Unless this
violence is stopped, which justice demands, it will only get worse, and it
will sow seeds of hatred and chaos that may well consume the region for
generations to come and threaten the peace of us all,” Pence told the U.N.
Security Council.
Pence warned the
military’s “terrible savagery” — systematic destruction of Rohingya villages,
killings of civilians, leading to an exodus of hundreds of thousands into
neighboring Bangladesh — “was ultimately endangering the sovereignty and
security of the entire region.”
The vice president’s
remarks, the strongest language from Washington to date, betrayed growing U.S.
impatience with Myanmar leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi,
who has drawn criticism for her relatively muted response.
On Tuesday,
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke to Suu Kyi, long revered at home and
around the world as the country’s champion for democratic rule, and “urged the
Burmese government and military to facilitate humanitarian aid and confront the
allegations of human rights abuses,” Pence said.
“And while we
welcome Suu Kyi’s comments that returning refugees have nothing to fear, the
United States renews our call on Burma’s security forces to end their violence
immediately and support diplomatic efforts for a long-term solution,” the vice
president added.
President Trump
wants “this Security Council and the United Nations to take strong and swift
action to bring this crisis to an end and give hope and help to the Rohingya
people in their hour of need,” Pence said.
The long-simmering
humanitarian crisis in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar, also known as Burma,
escalated sharply with a military crackdown on Aug. 25 in the northern Rakhine
State in response to attacks by Rohingya militants. Suu Kyi is skipping the
U.N. General Assembly, which brought Pence and Trump to New York.
Non-stop torching
Rohingya houses as challenging to the UN and US: https://lnkd.in/gt7Pnev
On Sept 14,
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday warned against
“unfounded criticism” aimed at Suu Kyi after discussing the crisis with her by
telephone. McConnell, arguably Congress’s leading voice on Myanmar, noted that
she does not control the military.
“Burma’s path to
representative government is not certain, and it is not over, and attacking the
single political leader who has worked to further democracy within Burma is
likely to hinder that objective in the long run,” the senator said.