Myanmar's Suu Kyi to address nation on Rakhine crisis next week

[YANGON] Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi will address the nation for the first time over a near three-week crisis in Rakhine state which has left scores dead and sent some 380,000 Rohingya muslims fleeing to Bangladesh.

"She is going to speak for national reconciliation and peace," in a televised address on September 19, government spokesman Zaw Htay told reporters.

Ms = Suu Kyi will also not attend the United Nations General Assembly this week, her spokesman said Wednesday, as the Nobel laureate faces a barrage of criticism over her failure to speak up for the Rohingya Muslims.

A crackdown by Myanmar's army, launched in response to Rohingya militant attacks on August 25, has sent some Rohingya refugees scrambling across the border to Bangladesh in less than three weeks.

The violence has incubated a humanitarian crisis on both sides of the border and piled intense global pressure on Ms Suu Kyi to condemn the army campaign, which the UN has described as having all the hallmarks of "ethnic cleansing".

Bangladesh is struggling to provide relief for exhausted and hungry refugees - some 60 per cent of whom are children - while nearly 30,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists as well as Hindus have been displaced inside Myanmar.

Nine thousand more Rohingya refugees poured into Bangladesh on Wednesday, the UN said, as authorities worked to build a new camp for tens of thousands of arrivals who have no shelter.

Ms Suu Kyi, Myanmar's first civilian leader in decades, has no control over the powerful military, which ran the country for 50 years before allowing free elections in 2015.

There is also scant sympathy among Myanmar's Buddhist majority for the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim group branded "Bengalis" - shorthand for illegal immigrants.

But outside of her country Ms Suu Kyi's reputation as a defender of the oppressed is in ruins over the Rohingya crisis.

Rights groups have pilloried the former democracy activist for failing to speak out against the army campaign, which has left hundreds dead.

Rohingya refugees have told chilling accounts of soldiers firing on civilians and razing entire villages in northern Rakhine state with the help of Buddhist mobs.

The army denies the allegations, while Suu Kyi has also played down claims of atrocities, instead blaming "a huge iceberg of misinformation" for complicating the conflict.

The UN Security Council was scheduled Wednesday to discuss the refugee crisis in a closed-door meeting, with China expected to shoot down any efforts to censure its strategically pivotal Southeast Asian ally.

AFP