In the face of widespread "atrocities" against ethnic Rohingya people in Myanmar, the United States has been cautiously stepping up pressure on that country's army, while taking care to avoid endangering the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Prince Charles and wife visits MalaysiaThis week, Malaysia welcomed the heir to the British throne, His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, and his wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, Duchess of Cornwall as the couple continued their 11-day tour of South and Southeast Asia.
The last time Aung San Suu Kyi visited Rakhine State in northern Myanmar was in 2015 during the country’s landmark general elections. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party won by a landslide victory – ending military rule of the country and ushering in a new civilian government. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was heralded as the leader who would turn around the struggling democracy.Her next visit was in early November this year.
US lawmakers proposed sanctions Friday against Myanmar's military, in some of the strongest efforts yet by Washington to pressure the Southeast Asian nation to end abusive treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority.House Republicans and Democrats introduced legislation that would curtail assistance or cooperation with Myanmar's military and require the White House to identify senior military officials who would have US visa bans imposed or re-imposed against them.A bipartisan group i
Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrived on her first visit to conflict-battered northern Rakhine State on Thursday, an official said, an unannounced trip to an area that has seen most of its Rohingya Muslim population forced out by an army campaign.Suu Kyi, a nobel laureate who leads Myanmar's pro-democracy party, has been hammered by the international community for failing to use her moral power to speak up in defence of the Rohingya.Some 600,000 of the stateless minority have fl
Muslim countries led by Saudi Arabia want the United Nations to denounce serious rights abuses in Myanmar and demand an end to the military campaign against the Rohingya, according to a draft resolution seen by AFP on Wednesday.In one of the worst refugee crises in decades, more than 600,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled an army crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state since late August.The draft resolution introduced this week to the General Assembly's human rights committee said UN member
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged Myanmar's army chief Thursday to help end the violence in Rakhine state that has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to flee.In a phone call with Min Aung Hlaing, Tillerson expressed "concern about the continuing humanitarian crisis and reported atrocities in Rakhine", according to a statement by State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.
The humanitarian crisis afflicting Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya has damaged the country’s political stability and shattered its image as a country moving toward democracy.
Myanmar's military has said it is investigating its operations in violence-wrecked Rakhine state, where the United Nations has accused troops of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims.In the last seven weeks, more than half a million Rohingya have fled Rakhine and crossed into neighbouring Bangladesh, shocking the globe with accounts of Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist mobs murdering and raping civilians before torching their villages to the ground.The western region d
Pope Francis will push for peace during his visit to Myanmar, a church official said Thursday, a trip that plunges the pontiff into the centre of a simmering religious conflict which has sparked an exodus of Muslim Rohingya.Myanmar's western Rakhine state has been torn apart by communal violence, sending more than 520,000 Rohingya racing over to neighbouring Bangladesh since late August.The leader of the world's Catholics will visit both nations on a highly charged trip in late Nove
The Security Council will on Friday hold an informal meeting on Myanmar to hear former UN chief Kofi Annan provide details of a report on the plight of Rohingya Muslims, diplomats said.The UN's top political affairs official, Jeffrey Feltman, will travel to Myanmar on Friday for four days of talks on the crisis.More than 500,000 people, mostly Rohingyas, have since late August fled an army campaign in Myanmar's Rakhine state that the United Nations has denounced as ethnic cleansing.
More than half a million Rohingya refugees have fled the atrocities in the Rakhine State to neighbouring Myanmar since the latest spate of violence began end of August.
