Myanmar leader says Rakhine commission will help heal wounds

Suu Kyi said the Rakhine State issue is a wound that hurts everyone, adding that she wishes the Rakhine commission, run by Kofi Annan and panel members, will help heal all the wounds of the country and the people.

Last month she asked Annan to lead an advisory commission focused on solving the state’s troubles.

While the demonstrations were going on, Annan told local officials and leaders from the Buddhist community that he and his team were there only to help provide ideas and counsel.

The wire agency also interviewed locals, one of whom said she joined the protest because she did not like foreigners in her state. “Ultimately, the people of Rakhine state must charge their own way forward”.

More than 100 people have been killed – the majority of them Muslims – while tens of thousands of the stateless Rohingya have spent the past four years trapped in bleak displacement camps with limited access to health care and other basic services.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, left, listens to Myanmar Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi during a meeting with members of the National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) Monday, Sept. 5, 2016, in Yangon, Myanmar. “You will be able to assess for yourself the roots of the problems itself, not in one day, not in one week. I am confident that you will get there, that you will find the answers because you are truly intent on looking for them”.

“This first visit is an opportunity to listen and learn from you, the local people”, he said, as protesters continued to chant slogans outside the building where he made his brief remarks. In its initial two-day visit, the panel will visit camps for Rohingya Muslims and publish its findings in the next months.

Annan is also scheduled to meet with President Htin Kyaw and military chief Min Aung Hlaing in capital Naypyidaw on the morning September 8.

Kofi Annan, the former United Nations chief, has been given a hostile welcome by local Buddhists in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state where he will investigate the religious conflict that has displaced tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya people.

However, the region’s largest political group, the Arakan National Party, has already ruled out meeting Annan.

“The ANP didn’t discuss anything but said we don’t agree with the commission and that it needs to be abolished”, he told Frontier on Tuesday.

Members of the almost one-million-strong Rohingya community are largely denied citizenship and the government does not recognise them as an official ethnic minority.

Their appalling living conditions, including severe restrictions on movement, have pushed tens of thousands of them to flee, many via treacherous sea journey south towards Malaysia.

He said that if Annan “wants to meet us personally, not as a commission, then we can meet him to show respect”.

The Rohingya are considered by many in Myanmar to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and most do not have citizenship.

But that question of identity remains incendiary for Buddhist hardliners.