Rohingya slam Suu Kyi for endorsing genocide

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ANKARA (AA) - Rohingya community across the world on Thursday hit back at Myanmar's State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, for her statement at an international court, defending military's crimes against the minority groups, in northern Rakhine State.

While the whole world is demanding justice for Rohingya, who faced brutal military crackdown in 2017, Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, defended the military at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Wednesday, bringing disrepute to the prize, she had won in 1991.

Ironically, the Myanmar State Counsellor was awarded Nobel prize for campaigning for democracy and peace. But after coming to power, she has not lived to the prestige of the prize, say activists.

“Aung Suu Kyi’s denying genocide of Rohingya at the world’s highest court, now officially amounted to her support to Myanmar military, for crimes against humanity,” Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.

Lwin left his home in Rakhine state in Myanmar in 2001 and is now based in Germany, where he has co-founded Free Rohingya Coalition.

He is up in arms against the former rights defender Suu Kyi, who has faced massive criticism for her silence on Rohingya killings, mass rapes, and destruction of their property.

“The height of the denial is, that Aung Suu Kyi refused to take our ethnic name -- Rohingya,” he said.

Lwin demanded that Nobel prize of Suu Kyi should be "immediately revoked".

"It is first time in the world history a Nobel peace prize winner has defended murders committed by criminals," he said. "It is an insult to all Nobel laureates," he added.

Lwin, however, said the community members were happy and thankful to the West African country Gambia, for making an “emphatic case at the ICJ."

“The presentation made by Gambia at the ICJ was detailed that included all evidence which has raised our expectations from the ICJ,” he added.

He further said that Suu Kyi terming the genocide of Rohingya as “internal conflict” was questionable. “Even if Myanmar military responded to separatist Arakan Army in 2017 as claimed by Suu Kyi, but genocide of Rohingya did not start in 2017. It is happening for over past many decades,” he said.

During her statement before the ICJ, Suu Kyi said: “Although the focus here is on members of the military, I can assure you that appropriate action will be taken against civilian offenders, in line with the due process.

"Myanmar military responded to an internal conflict in 2017," she said, referring to the operation launched against the Rohingya by the Myanmar Army. Nearly 24,000 Rohingya Muslims were killed during the operation, according to a report by the Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA).

A UN fact-finding mission earlier this year said that genocide threat for Rohingya in Myanmar was greater than ever.

"Many of the conditions that led to killings, rapes and gang rapes, torture, forced displacement and other grave rights violations by the country’s [Myanmar] military that prompted some 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh in 2017, are still present," said the report of independent UN investigators, which was submitted to the UN Secretary General as well.