Aung San Suu Kyi calls for unity in divided Rakhine

But the main theme of the occasion was “change” and “democracy”, not religion.

The opposition NLD has claimed that it will ensure equal rights for all nationalities and religions in the predominantly Buddhist country if it wins.

Elzbieta Karska, who chairs a United Nations group studying the issue, said IS is using social media and informal networks of friends and family, with many of them in Syria, to recruit new jihadists in Belgium.

“One sleepless night is worth the trouble” to vote in this election, said the NLD supporter who will be back on Monday.

Ms Suu Kyi has been criticised for not speaking up for the Rohingya. “I’m not sure, I don’t believe that”, one supporter said following Suu Kyi’s speech, drawing applause from the crowd, although under the military-drafted constitution Suu Kyi is barred from being president.

“The situation in the south of Rakhine is different from in the north and we hope it will be no problem for her to visit”.

“Nobody is [politically] aware here and we don’t know what voter education is”, she said.

But despite the question of safety for Aung San Suu Kyi-who will not visit the state capital Sittwe or other areas that were hit hardest by communal violence-many prominent members of the ethnic Rakhine community welcomed her to their state Friday.

More than 200 people died and about 140,000 people – mainly Rohingya – were made homeless. 25 saying, “The disqualification of nearly all Muslim candidates running in Rakhine state further limits representation possibilities for the Rohingya population, already largely disenfranchised by the cancellation of voting rights for former temporary citizenship card holders”. Five Kaman were reported killed and four Rakhine injured.

With her decision to tour Arakan State, Suu Kyi is making an assertive but calculated push into western Burma, where her party’s struggle to counter a rising tide of Buddhist nationalism and attendant anti-Muslim sentiment is arguably facing its biggest test. Others say it was a broadside in response to her refusal to attend Thursday’s signing of a landmark peace deal with ethnic armed groups.

“A significant degree of recruitment now occurs through friends and family in Syria, who are also paid on the basis of the number of persons they recruit and on whether the recruits subsequently marry”, she said.

At the same time, there have been reports of hardline Buddhist nationalist monks and local leaders of the powerful Arakan National Party calling on supporters to prevent Suu Kyi from campaigning in the state.

He added that many Massachusetts Ba Tha monks had been going around local villages stirring up anti-Muslim feeling in an attempt to persuade residents not to vote for the NLD. Many observers believe the National League for Democracy will make major gains in the vote.

He also claimed that a large number of Muslim people had been excluded from the voter lists in a deliberate attempt to cost the NLD votes. It is poised to escape a half-century of military dictatorship, but many fear the rug will be pulled from under at any moment – illustrated by the fatalistic reaction to Tuesday’s announcement by the Union Election Commission (UEC) that the long-awaited polls may be postponed because of widespread flooding and landslides.

The commission has rejected more than 100 would-be candidates, mostly Muslims, stating their parents were not recognised as citizens yet at the time of the candidates’ births, meaning their candidacy would be in violation of the Elections Law.