Pope to visit Hiroshima on anti-nuclear weapon mission

Yahoo – AFP, Catherine MARCIANO with Ursula HYZY in Tokyo, November 18, 2019

Pope Francis had hoped years ago to be a missionary in Japan, a country
the pontiff is to visit this week as he seeks a ban on nuclear weapons
(AFP Photo/Vincenzo PINTO)

Pope Francis, who years ago hoped to be a missionary in Japan, travels to the sites of the world's only atomic attacks this week seeking a ban on nuclear weapons.

The Argentine pontiff, 82, flies to Asia on Tuesday, where he will first visit Thailand and then Japan, including the two cities destroyed by devastating US nuclear attacks during the Second World War.

Despite both countries having less than 0.6 percent Catholic populations, Francis is thirsty for interreligious dialogue with them.

He will arrive in Thailand on Wednesday before flying on to Japan on Saturday, where he will stay until November 26.

Sunday is set to be a marathon day with visits to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where at least 74,000 people and 140,000 people respectively were killed by the atomic bombs attacks.

The August 6, 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki three days later contributed to Japan's surrender and the end of the Second World War on August 15, months after Nazi Germany capitulated.

Father Yoshio Kajiyama, director of the Jesuit social centre in Tokyo, was born in Hiroshima shortly after the war and is eagerly awaiting the pope's anti-nuclear speech.

"My grandfather died the day of the bomb in Hiroshima, I never knew him. Four days later my aunt died when she was 15 years old," said the 64-year-old.

"If you grow up in Hiroshima, you can't forget the bomb."

No nukes message

The pope will make "as vigorous an appeal as possible in favour of concerted measures to completely eliminate nuclear weapons," Vatican number two Cardinal Pietro Parolin told the United Nations in September.

"Using atomic energy to wage war is immoral," the head of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics told Japanese television in September.

A previous member of Japan's diplomatic mission to the Vatican, Shigeru Tokuyasu, said he hopes the visit will pull the world back from "the globalisation of indifference" over nuclear weapons.

But, said Tokuyasu, the pope should avoid discussing the politically sensitive issue of nuclear energy.

Francis is als to meet victims of the devastating 2011 earthquake that struck northeastern Japan and the subsequent tsunami that between them killed 18,500 people and sparked the nuclear power catastrophe at Fukushima.

Fear of nuclear war

Francis is used to railing against countries that make money from weapons and has already voiced his fear of a nuclear war.

In January last year, he printed cards with a photo of a Nagasaki bomb victim, inscribing the words "the fruit of war" above his signature.

The 1945 photo, captured by American photographer Joe O'Donnell, showed a small boy standing ramrod straight carrying his dead younger brother on his back while waiting for his turn at a cremation site.

The late pope John Paul II visited Japan in 1981, where at Hiroshima's peace monument he pointed to war as "the work of man".

In August, the city of Hiroshima called on Japan to sign the UN treaty calling for a ban on nuclear weapons, something that all the world's nuclear powers have refused to do.

Japan, with its pacifist post-war constitution, adhered in 1967 to the principle of "not producing, possessing or allowing nuclear weapons on its territory," despite counting on the US nuclear umbrella for protection.

Multiethnic Thailand

Before arriving in Thailand on Wednesday, the pope praised the "multiethnic nation" which "has worked to promote harmony and peaceful coexistence, not only among its habitants but throughout Southeast Asia."

In a video message to the Thai people, the pope said he hoped to "strengthen ties of friendship" with Buddhists.

SinceFrancis' election six years ago, he has made two trips to Asia, visiting the Philippines and Sri Lanka in 2014, followed by Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2017.

On Thursday in Bangkok, the pontiff is to pay a visit to supreme patriarch Somdej Phra Maha Muneewong at a Buddhist temple.

Leaked China documents reveal 'no mercy' in Xinjiang: NYT

Yahoo - AFP, November 17, 2019

China has been accused of rounding up more than a million Uighurs and mostly
Muslim minorities in Xinjiang (AFP Photo/WANG Zhao)

Beijing (AFP) - A rare and huge leak of Chinese government documents has shed new light on a security crackdown on Muslims in China's Xinjiang region, where President Xi Jinping ordered officials to act with "absolutely no mercy" against separatism and extremism, The New York Times reported.

Human rights groups and outside experts say more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been rounded up in a network of internment camps across the far-western region.

The 403 pages of internal papers obtained by the Times provide an unprecedented look into the highly-secretive Communist Party's controversial crackdown, which has come under increasing international criticism, especially from the United States.

The documents include previously unpublished speeches by Xi as well as directives and reports on the surveillance and control of the Uighur population, the newspaper said on the weekend.

The leak also suggests that there has been some discontent within the party about the crackdown.

The documents were leaked by an unnamed member of the Chinese political establishment who expressed hope that the disclosure would prevent the leadership, including Xi, from "escaping culpability for the mass detentions", the Times said.

In a 2014 speech to officials made after militants from the Uighur minority killed 31 people in a train station in southwestern China, Xi called for an all-out "struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism" using the "organs of dictatorship," and showing "absolutely no mercy", according to the daily.

The internment camps expanded rapidly following the appointment in 2016 of a new party chief in Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo.

Chen, according to the Times, distributed Xi's speeches to justify the crackdown and urged officials to "round up everyone who should be rounded up".

Reputed within the party for his handling of minority groups, Chen earlier led iron-fisted policies aimed at crushing dissent in Tibet.

The trove of leaked documents included a guide to answering questions from students who had returned home to Xinjiang to find their families missing or detained in camps.

Officials were instructed to say the students' family members had been infected with the "virus" of extremist thinking and needed to be treated before "a small illness becomes a serious one".

China's foreign ministry and the Xinjiang regional government did not immediately respond to AFP's requests for comment.

'Black and white' confirmation

The documents also shed light on the party's punishment of one official, Wang Yongzhi, who was investigated from 2017 to 2018 for disobeying party orders.

Wang released on his own initiative more than 7,000 people from camps in Xinjiang, and feared that "rounding up so many people would knowingly fan conflict and deepen resentment", according to a confession by Wang leaked to the Times.

China, after initially denying the camps, has described them as vocational schools aimed at dampening the allure of Islamist extremism and violence through education and job training.

But rights groups and foreign media, including AFP, have reported that official documents and satellite images show the facilities are equipped and run like prisons.

The leak "confirms in black and white, in the party's own words, its conscious and systematic extrajudicial mass internment of Muslims in Xinjiang," said James Leibold, an expert on ethnic relations in China and a professor at Melbourne's La Trobe University.

The documents show that "there was resistance on a local level" with local officials who disagreed with the policy facing punishment or being purged, Leibold told AFP.

Additionally, he said, the fact that the documents were leaked is "a significant indicator that there are many inside the party who think this is an unwise policy and wish to hold Xi Jinping and Chen Quanguo accountable".

Uighur researchers say China running more camps than known

Yahoo – AFP, Shaun TANDON, November 12, 2019

Two women decorate a grave in a Uighur graveyard on the outskirts of Hotan
in China's northwestern Xinjiang region in May 2019 (AFP Photo/Greg Baker)

Uighur activists said Tuesday they have documented nearly 500 camps and prisons run by China to detain the ethnic group, alleging that China could be holding far more than the commonly cited figure of one million people.

The East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, a Washington-based group that seeks independence for the mostly Muslim region known to China as Xinjiang, gave the geographic coordinates of 182 suspected "concentration camps" where Uighurs are allegedly pressured to renounce their culture.

Researching imagery from Google Earth, the group said it also spotted 209 suspected prisons and 74 suspected labor camps for which it would share details later.

"In large part these have not been previously identified, so we could be talking about far greater numbers" of people detained, said Kyle Olbert, the director of operations for the movement.

"If anything, we are concerned that there may be more facilities that we have not been able to identify," he told a news conference in suburban Washington.

Anders Corr, an analyst who formerly worked in US intelligence and who advised the group, said that around 40 percent of the sites had not been previously reported.

Rights advocates have generally estimated that China is detaining more than one million Uighurs and members of other predominantly Muslim Turkic ethnicities.

But Randall Schriver, the top Pentagon official for Asia, said in May that the figure was "likely closer to three million citizens" -- an extraordinary number in a region of 10 million people.

Olbert said that archive imagery from alleged camp sites showed consistent patterns -- steel and concrete construction over the past four years along with security perimeters.

He said that the group tried to verify the nature of each site with on-the-ground accounts but declined greater detail, citing the need to protect sources.

A Uighur man carries chicken from an underground oven at a restaurant in Hotan

in China's northwest Xinjiang region in May 2019 (AFP Photo/Greg Baker)

'Like boiling a frog'

Activists and witnesses say China is using torture to forcibly integrate Uighurs into the Han majority, including pressuring Muslims to give up tenets of their faith such as praying and abstaining from pork and alcohol.

Olbert described China's policy as "genocide by incarceration," fearing that Uighurs would be held indefinitely.

"It's like boiling a frog. If they were to kill 10,000 people a day, the world might take notice," he said.

"But if they were just to keep everyone imprisoned and let them die off naturally, perhaps the world might not notice. I think that's what China is banking on," he said.

China has justified its policy after first denying the camps, saying that it is providing vocational training and coaxing Muslims away from extremism. Hundreds died in 2009 riots in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi that largely targeted Han Chinese.

The United States has likened China's treatment of Uighurs to Nazi Germany's concentration camps but an increasingly strong Beijing has faced limited criticism outside the West.

China last month secured a statement at the United Nations by nations including Russia, Pakistan and Egypt -- which have all faced criticism of their own records -- that praised Beijing's "remarkable achievements in the field of human rights."

The Uighur activist group said it periodically added data including on the destruction of cemeteries in Xinjiang, which was documented in an investigation last month by AFP using satellite imagery.

The movement said it had unsuccessfully asked the State Department for satellite data in hopes of improving its information sources.

Suu Kyi 'culpability' in Rohingya abuses an 'open-ended question': UN investigator

Yahoo – AFP, 17 September 2019

Suu Kyi is a Nobel laureate who spent years in house arrest

UN investigators called Tuesday for an expert evaluation of whether Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi can be legally implicated in the abuses committed against the country's Rohingya minority.

The fact-finding mission to Myanmar, set up by the UN Human Rights Council, said they were not equipped to determine what level of responsibility Suu Kyi should shoulder for the Rohingya crisis.

"It will become a legal issue whether or not there is an element of culpability here," fact-finding mission chair Marzuki Darusman told reporters in Geneva.

The Human Rights Council recently created a panel to prepare criminal indictments over atrocities committed in the country -- the so-called Independent International Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) -- which could have the expertise to determine what responsibility Suu Kyi bears in the crisis.

A Rohingya child plays with a football inside a sewage pipe at a refugee camp

"It is still an open-ended question to what extent she might be implicated," Darusman said.

When asked if the Nobel laureate might be implicated, he said "that is for the judicial process to address," referring to the IIMM.

The fact-finding mission last year branded the army operation in August 2017 as "genocide" and called for the prosecution of top generals, including army chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Some 740,000 Rohingya fled burning villages, bringing accounts of murder, rape and torture over the border to sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh, where survivors of previous waves of persecution already languished.

And in a damning report published Monday, the investigators warned that the 600,000 Rohingya still inside Myanmar's Rakhine state remain in deteriorating and "deplorable" conditions and continue to face a "serious risk of genocide".

Some 740,000 Rohingya fled burning villages, bringing accounts of murder,

rape and torture

The experts told the rights council on Tuesday that they had a confidential list of some 150 names, including officials, suspected of being involved in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

'Criminal responsibility'?

Darusman said that the investigators initially shied away from laying blame on Suu Kyi, who spent years in house arrest before her party in 2015 won Myanmar's first fully free vote for generations.

He said that the fact-finding team had taken into account that Myanmar was "going through a transition, a democratic transition, and therefore in our first report we absolved Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi from any direct responsibility."

But while it was likely that Suu Kyi was not aware in August 2017 of the army's activities, "the issue now is that subsequently, there was no further addressing of this issue on her part," Darusman said.

Major Rohingya refugee camp populations in Bangladesh, as of Aug 15, 2019

Another member of the fact-finding mission, Christopher Sidoti, acknowledged that "it is clear that the civilian side of the government does not control the military side of the government."

But "the civilian side of the government has very substantial constitutional responsibilities," he said.

"The longer this goes on, the more impossible it is for the civilian side of the government to escape international criminal responsibility for the human rights situation in Myanmar."

The fact-finding mission, which was never granted access to Myanmar, is expected to wrap up its work during the ongoing session of the Human Rights Council, due to end next week.

But the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights situation in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, should continue monitoring the situation.

Backlash grows over contentious India citizenship list

Yahoo – AFP, September 1, 2019

A controversial citizenship list has left almost two million people facing
statelessness in India's Assam (AFP Photo/Biju BORO)

A controversial citizenship list in northeast India that has left almost two million people facing statelessness has been slammed by its political backers as those excluded from it face an uncertain future.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which runs Assam state where the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was collated, pushed for the list saying it was necessary to detect "foreign infiltrators".

Critics said the NRC process reflected the BJP's goal to serve Hindus, with a large chunk of those excluded expected to be Muslims.

But the strategy appears to have backfired with local BJP leaders claiming that many Bengali-speaking Hindus, a key vote bank for the party, were left off the list.

"We do not trust this NRC. We are very unhappy," Ranjeet Kumar Dass, BJP party president in Assam told the Press Trust of India late Saturday.

"Many people with forged certificates were included," Dass said, while 200,000 "genuine Indians" were left out.

Those left off have 120 days to appeal at special Foreigners Tribunals.

"If we see that FTs are delivering adverse judgements on the appeals by genuine Indian citizens... we will bring in legislation and make an act to protect them," Dass added.

A leader of the main opposition Congress Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said his party would support those who were wrongly excluded, including providing them with legal aid.

Assam has long seen large influxes from elsewhere, including under British colonial rule and around Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence when millions fled into India.

Under the NRC, only those who could demonstrate they or their forebears were in India before 1971 could be included in the list.

Assam villagers told AFP about family members who were excluded even though they had similar documents to their relatives.

"Our children's names are in the list but my wife's name is missing. She submitted all the documents and records... Why?," asked resident Jaynal Abudin.

Those left out, many of whom are poor and illiterate, have to navigate a long and expensive legal process that could include bringing their cases to the courts if they are rejected by a foreigner tribunal.

The NRC, which comes in the wake of New Delhi revoking the autonomy of Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, has reinforced fears among India's 170 million Muslim minority that they are being singled out by the central government.

The BJP has previously said it wants the NRC to be replicated nationwide.

Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari on Saturday called for the list to be applied in the capital, saying it was needed to identify illegal immigrants.

No Rohingya turn up for repatriation to Myanmar

Yahoo – AFP, Sam JAHAN, August 22, 2019

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh after a
military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state (AFP Photo/MUNIR UZ ZAMAN)

Teknaf (Bangladesh) (AFP) - A fresh push to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar fall flat on Thursday, with no one turning up to hop on five buses and 10 trucks laid on by Bangladesh.

Members of the Muslim minority, 740,000 of whom fled a military offensive in 2017, are refusing to return without guarantees for their safety and a promise that they will at last be given citizenship by Myanmar.

"The Myanmar government raped us, and killed us. So we need security. Without security we will never go back," Rohingya leader Nosima said in a statement.

"We need a real guarantee of citizenship, security and promise of original homelands," said Mohammad Islam, a Rohingya from Camp 26, one of a string of sites in southeast Bangladesh that are home to around a million people.

"So we must talk with the Myanmar government about this before repatriation."

The vehicles provided to transport the first batch out of 3,450 earmarked for return turned up at 9:00 am (0300 GMT) at the camp in Teknaf.

But more than six hours later none had showed up and the vehicles departed empty. Officials said they would return on Friday.

"We've interviewed 295 families. But nobody has yet shown any interest to repatriate," Bangladesh Refugee Commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam told reporters.

Major Rohingya refugee camp populations in Bangladesh, as of Aug 15, 

2019. (AFP Photo/Gal ROMA)

He said that officials would continue to interview families.

'Bengali interlopers'

The Rohingya are not recognised as an official minority by the Myanmar government, which considers them Bengali interlopers despite many families having lived in the country for generations.

UN investigators say the 2017 violence warrants the prosecution of top generals for "genocide" and the International Criminal Court has started a preliminary probe.

It has sullied the international standing of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate and former political prisoner who has risen to be the top civilian official in Myanmar.

The latest repatriation attempt -- a previous push failed in November with many of those on a returnees list going into hiding -- follows a visit last month to the camps by high-ranking officials from Myanmar.

Bangladesh's foreign ministry forwarded a list of more than 22,000 refugees to Myanmar for verification and Naypyidaw cleared 3,450 individuals for "return".

Rohingya refugees are demanding security and citizenship guarantees 

before they return to Myanmar (AFP Photo/MUNIR UZ ZAMAN)

Rohingya community leader Jafar Alam told AFP the refugees had been gripped by fear since authorities announced the fresh repatriation process.

They also feared being sent to camps for internally displaced people (IDP) if they went back to Myanmar.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen told a TV channel in Dhaka that Thursday's no-show was "very disappointing" but he hoped "good sense would finally prevail".

"The Rohingya want to achieve all their demands by taking us (Bangladesh) as hostage. But I don't know how long we can accept it," he told Jamuna TV.

Chinese and Myanmar diplomats were also at the Rohingya refugee camp.

The latest repatriation attempt comes in the wake of July talks between Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

China is a key ally of Myanmar, and Hasina said then that Beijing would "do whatever is required" to help resolve the Rohingya crisis.

"Myanmar has yet to address the systematic persecution and violence against the Rohingya," Human Rights Watch said Thursday. "So refugees have every reason to fear for their safety if they return."

UN experts urge 'financial isolation' of Myanmar military

Yahoo – AFP, 14 May 2019

Around 740,000 Rohingya people have been forced to flee Myanmar to refugees
camps like this one in Bangladesh

Myanmar's military commanders should be financially "isolated" and brought to trial to face charges of war crimes and genocide against the Rohingya minority, UN investigators said Tuesday.

The United Nations fact-finding mission on the situation in Myanmar called on the international community to cut off all financial and other support to the country's military.

Marzuki Darusman, who heads the fact-finding mission which just concluded a 10-day visit to surrounding countries, said drastic measures were needed since Myanmar so far had done little to resolve the egregious rights situation in the country.

"There has been no movement toward a resolution of the crisis," Darusman said in a statement. "The situation is at a total standstill."

Some 740,000 Rohingya refugees fled a military crackdown in August 2017 to cross into Bangladesh where 300,000 members of the persecuted Muslim minority were already in camps.

Many Rohingya refugees who fled said there had been mass rapes and slaughters in the villages, and in a report published last September, the fact-finding mission said there were reasonable grounds to believe the atrocities amounted to "genocide".

The investigators lamented Tuesday that "both military and civilian sides of Myanmar’s government persistently deny the facts and disclaim any responsibility for crimes under international law.

"Following this violence, Myanmar authorities have levelled empty Rohingya villages with bulldozers, effectively destroying criminal evidence, while making no substantive progress in resolving the ethnic animosities that have helped fuel the crisis," they said.

The UN fact-finding mission was not granted access to Myanmar itself, but during their visit to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, the investigators met exiled representatives from the Chin, Kachin, Shan and Rakhine ethnic communities.

"Meeting with these different ethnic communities only underscored our findings that the Tatmadaw (the Myanmar military) has over time committed similar atrocities against many of the ethnic groups living within the borders of Myanmar," expert Radhika Coomaraswamy said in the statement.

Another member of the team, Christopher Sidoti, said the investigators so far had "seen no evidence that the Myanmar government is acting in good faith to resolve the crisis or facilitate the safe return of refugees.

"The situation demands an increase in international pressure," he said.

"Due to the gravity of the past and continuing violations, attention must be given to the political, economic and financial ties of the Myanmar military – to identify who and what should be targeted so we can cut off the money supply as a means of increasing the pressure and reducing the violence," he added.

The fact-finding mission is due to present its final report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next September, and will hand over its findings to a panel tasked with preparing criminal indictments.

Rohingya returnees won't be kept in camps 'forever': Myanmar official

Yahoo – AFP, Joe Freeman, March 17, 2018

Myanmar's government has built transit camps in Rakhine but so far not a single
Rohingya has crossed back from Bangladesh (AFP Photo/Cape Diamond)

Maungdaw (Myanmar) (AFP) - A Myanmar official in Rakhine state said Saturday that Rohingya refugees who return will not be held in newly-built camps "forever," as concerns mount over a vexed repatriation process and efforts to reshape communities in the crisis-hit state.

Ye Htut, the administrator of Maungdaw district, was speaking to reporters on a government-chaperoned trip to northern Rakhine, the site of a military crackdown last August that has emptied the region of some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims.

Myanmar has been trumpeting its readiness to take back refugees, who are massed across the border in Bangladesh, and built reception centres and transit camps for returnees.

But not a single Rohingya has crossed the border, with the United Nations sounding the alarm that Myanmar must do far more to ensure the safety of a minority that was targeted in an army-led campaign the UN branded "ethnic cleansing".

Rights groups have also raised concerns about how Buddhist-majority Myanmar is reconstructing Rakhine in the Rohingyas' absence, with authorities bulldozing over their burned villages and building new settlements and security posts.

An AFP reporter witnessed a flurry of construction in the region on Saturday, with work crews erecting prefabricated houses along a road leading to Maungdaw town.

Speaking to reporters from his office, Ye Htut insisted that any Rohingya returnees would eventually be resettled close to their original villages after staying in transit camps.

"I can't ask them to live (at the camps) forever...We don't have any vision or intention to keep them long," he said.

The government "will return them back to their native villages or close by," he added.

But a visit to one of the resettlement sites intended for Rohingya, whom a government official referred to only as Muslims, showed slow progress.

Only three squat houses with concrete and brick foundations had been built in a field covered in churned up dirt and tread marks from heavy machinery.

Charred ruins

The site, which lies two hours north of Maungdaw town by car, was chosen for its proximity to the original village, which lay in charred ruins within view.

Myint Khaing, Maungdaw township administrator, said about 100 families were supposed to live in the new site and that it would be completed in two months.

Asked why its construction was not as far along as a settlement 30 minutes away intended for an internally displaced ethnic minority called the Mro, he suggested priority was given to communities that had not fled to Bangladesh.

"They didn't run away," he said.

Myanmar has vehemently denied accusations that is trying to erase the Rohingya's ties to Rakhine, insisting the army crackdown was a targeted assault on Muslim militants.

But the UN and rights groups have pointed to the country's long history of marginalising and persecuting the Muslim minority, who are denied citizenship and loathed by the Buddhist majority.

More than 100,000 are still languishing in a squalid refugee camp in southern Rakhine state after being displaced by communal violence in 2012.

On Friday the head of the UN's refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, said the conditions for the Rohingyas' safe return were not yet in place and that discussions with Myanmar on repatriation "have been pretty basic, not very frequent (and) not very advanced".

Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a deal that was supposed to see repatriation begin in January.

But Myanmar has so far agreed to accept only 374 of 8,000 refugees whose names have been put forward by Dhaka for the initial batch of returnees.

Related Article:

'Wake up' and stop Rohingya abuses: Nobel laureates to Suu Kyi

With #Rohingya gone, Myanmar's ethnic #Rakhine seek Muslim-free 'buffer zone' pic.twitter.com/gGE8y5N1dU

— AFP news agency (@AFP) March 16, 2018

VIDEO: Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi pulls out of a public speech and question-and-answer session in Sydney because she is "not feeling well" pic.twitter.com/kXfYZ15oz7

— AFP news agency (@AFP) March 19, 2018

Pope sidesteps Rohingya crisis during Myanmar address

Yahoo - AFP, Catherine MARCIANO, Phyo Hein KYAW, 28 November 2017

The pope's trip to Myanmar has so far avoided explicit mention of the country's
Rohingya Muslim minority

Pope Francis urged respect for rights and justice in a keenly-watched address in Myanmar on Tuesday, but refrained from any mention of the Rohingya or the alleged ethnic cleansing that has driven huge numbers of the Muslim minority from the country.

Sharing a stage with Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the capital Naypyidaw, the pontiff tip-toed around the humanitarian emergency of the Rohingya.

Peace can only be achieved through "justice and a respect for human rights", he said in a broadly-framed speech that also called for "respect for each ethnic group and its identity".

The word "Rohingya", an incendiary term in a mainly Buddhist country where the minority are denied citizenship and branded illegal "Bengali" immigrants, was entirely absent from his speech.

Francis has repeatedly defended the group, 620,000 of whom have fled from Myanmar's Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August.

Rights groups had urged him during his four-day visit to confront Myanmar about its actions, but the local Catholic Church cautioned him against straying into the Rohingya issue.

Also on Tuesday, the UN Human Rights Council announced it will hold a special session next week to discuss the situation facing the Rohingya and other minorities in Rakhine.

The December 5 session "is being convened per an official request submitted today by Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia" that has been supported by 73 states, the rights council said in a statement.

Rohingya refugees react as police and officials attempt to control a surging crowd as

 they wait for rice, water, and cooking oil in a relief centre at the Kutupalong refugee 

camp in Cox's Bazar on November 28, 2017

Widespread loathing

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been ostracised by a global rights community that once adored her but is now outraged at her tepid response to the crisis.

She spoke of the challenges her country faces as it creeps out of the shadow of five decades of military rule, but also did not reference the Rohingya.

The government aimed to build the nation by "protecting rights, fostering tolerance, ensuring security for all", she said in a short speech, that gave a nod to the "situation in the Rakhine."

The pope's peace mission is strewn with pitfalls in Myanmar, where a monk-led Buddhist nationalist movement has fostered widespread loathing for the Rohingya.

In recognition of those tensions his public speech was "very carefully worded", Myanmar-based political analyst Richard Horsey told AFP, speculating "he is likely to have been more forthright in private meetings with Myanmar's leaders."

But the pontiff's words were of little comfort to Rohingya stuck in dire conditions in Bangladesh.

"We are very much disappointed that he did not mention the Rohingya crisis," said activist Mohammad Zubair from Kutupalong refugee camp, speaking of a religious leader who previously "even held prayers for the Rohingya".

This handout picture taken and released by the Vatican press office (Osservatore 

Romano) on November 28, 2017 shows Pope Francis (L) and Myanmar's civilian

leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a meeting in Naypyidaw

The Pope, The Lady and a General

Late on Monday the 80-year-old pontiff received a "courtesy visit" from Myanmar's powerful army chief -- whose troops, according to the UN and US, have waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine.

Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has firmly denied allegations of widespread brutality by his forces, despite the flight of hundreds of thousands who have recounted rape, murder and arson.

His office said the general told the pope there was "no discrimination" in Myanmar, and he praised his military for maintaining "the peace and stability of the country".

Known fondly as The Lady, in Myanmar, Suu Kyi finally came to power after elections in 2015 but has fallen from grace abroad for not doing more to stand up to the army in defence of the Rohingya.

Rights groups have clamoured for Suu Kyi to be stripped of her Nobel prize. Oxford, the English city she once called home, on Monday removed her Freedom of the City award for "inaction" in the face of oppression of the Rohingya.

Just days before the papal visit, Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a deal to start repatriating Rohingya refugees within two months.

But details of the agreement -- including the use of temporary shelters for returnees, many of whose homes have been burned to the ground -- raise questions for Rohingya fearful of returning without guarantees of basic rights.

The pontiff has received a warm welcome in Myanmar, whose Catholic community numbers just over one percent of a 51 million population.

But around 200,000 Catholics from all corners of the country are pouring into the commercial capital Yangon ahead of a huge, open-air mass on Wednesday morning.

Francis will travel on to Bangladesh on Thursday.

Pope Francis called for respect for rights and justice in a keenly-watched address in Myanmar but refrained from any mention of the Rohingya pic.twitter.com/A5w10lfAEW

— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 28, 2017

Pope Francis wraps up a high-stakes Asia tour dominated by the plight of the Rohingya, with a visit to a hospital in Dhaka run by the order of Mother Theresa https://t.co/KoeAJL2QAo pic.twitter.com/OqrIp3OoC6

— AFP news agency (@AFP) December 2, 2017