MANILA: Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi faced rising global pressure Tuesday to solve the crisis for her nation’s displaced Rohingya Muslim minority, meeting the UN chief and America’s top diplomat in the Philippines.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Nobel laureate that hundreds of thousands of displaced Muslims who had fled to Bangladesh should be allowed to return to their homes in Myanmar.
“The secretary-general highlighted that strengthened efforts to ensure humanitarian access, safe, dignified, voluntary and sustained returns, as well as true reconciliation between communities, would be essential,” a UN statement said, summarizing comments to Suu Kyi.
Guterres’ comments came hours before Suu Kyi sat down with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Manila.
Washington has been cautious in its statements on the situation in Rakhine, and has avoided outright criticism of Suu Kyi.
Supporters say she must navigate a path between outrage abroad and popular feeling in a majority Buddhist country where most people believe the Rohingya are interlopers.
At a photo opportunity at the top of her meeting with Tillerson, Suu Kyi ignored a journalist who asked if the Rohingya were citizens of Myanmar.
At a later appearance after the meeting, Tillerson — who is headed to Myanmar on Wednesday — was asked by reporters if he “had a message for Burmese leaders.”
He apparently ignored the question, replying only: “Thank you,” according to a pool report of the encounter.
A senior US State Department official later said the top diplomat would press Myanmar’s powerful army chief on Wednesday to halt the violence in Rakhine and make it safe for Rohingya to return.
The official did not comment on whether Tillerson would raise the threat of military sanctions, which US lawmakers have pushed for.
Canada’s Justin Trudeau said he had spoken to Myanmar’s de facto leader.
“I had an extended conversation with... Aung San Suu Kyi, about the plight of the Muslim refugees in Rakhine state,” he told a press conference.
“This is of tremendous concern to Canada and many, many other countries around the world.
“We are always looking at... how we can help, how we can move forward in a way that reduces violence, that emphasises the rule of law and that ensures protection for all citizens,” he said.
More than 600,000 Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh since late August, and now live in the squalor of the world’s biggest refugee camp.
The crisis erupted after Rohingya rebels attacked police posts in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, triggering a military crackdown that saw hundreds of villages reduced to ashes and sparked a massive exodus.
The UN says the Myanmar military is engaged in a “coordinated and systematic” attempt to purge the region of Rohingya in what amounts to a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
The stream of desperate refugees who escape across the riverine border bring with them stories of rape, murder and the torching of villages by soldiers and Buddhist mobs.
The Burmese government insists military action in Rakhine is a proportionate response to violence by militants.
Following its first official investigation into the crisis, the army published a report this week in which it cleared itself of any abuses.
However, it heavily restricts access to the region by independent journalists and aid groups, and verification of events on the ground is virtually impossible.
Suu Kyi, a former democracy activist, has been lambasted by rights groups for failing to speak up for the Rohingya or condemn festering anti-Muslim sentiment in the country.
Musician and campaigner Bob Geldof on Monday slammed Suu Kyi as a “murderer” and a “handmaiden to genocide,” becoming the latest in a growing line of global figures to disavow the one-time darling of the human rights community.
Supporters say she does not have the power to stop the powerful military, which ruled the country for decades until her party came to power following 2015 elections.
In a summit on Monday night with leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, Guterres also voiced concern about the Rohingya.
He said the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya was a “worrying escalation in a protracted tragedy,” according to the UN statement.
He described the situation as a potential source of instability in the region, as well as radicalization.
Myanmar’s Suu Kyi meets Tillerson and UN chief on Rohingya crisis
Myanmar’s Suu Kyi meets Tillerson and UN chief on Rohingya crisis
Russia jails 15 for life over IS-claimed 2024 concert hall attack
- Eleven other men were also jailed for life for acting as accomplices and of having terrorist links
- Four more men were handed sentences of between 19 and 22 years over their links with the attackers
MOSCOW: A Russian court on Thursday handed life sentences to four gunmen from Tajikistan, and 11 others it said were their accomplices, for the 2024 Crocus concert hall attack that left 150 people dead.
The March 2024 shooting spree was claimed by Daesh and was the deadliest militant attack in Russia in more than two decades.
Relatives of some of the victims stood in the grand Moscow military court as the verdict was read out.
Shamsidin Fariduni, Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Makhammadsobir Fayzov and Saidakrami Rachabolizoda — all Tajik citizens who went on a shooting spree in the building before setting it on fire — looked down as the judge sentenced them to life.
Eleven other men — some Russian citizens — were also jailed for life for acting as accomplices and of having terrorist links.
Four more men — including a father and his sons — were handed sentences of between 19 and 22 years over their links with the attackers.
The gunmen entered the concert hall shortly before a show by Soviet-era rock band Picnic. They went on a shooting spree before setting fire to the building, trapping many victims. The attack wounded more than 600 people. Six children were among those killed.
Uliana Filippochkina, whose twin brother Grigory was killed in the attack, flew from Siberia’s Novosibirsk for the verdict.
She said she was “satisfied” with the ruling and that she had looked the men who killed her twin in the eyes during their final statements in the trial.
“They didn’t explain anything, they tried to escape responsibility, appealing to the fact that they had wives and children... That they were under the influence of drugs,” she said.
- ‘No remorse’ -
“There was no sympathy or remorse whatsoever,” she added.
Her brother went to the concert shortly before his 35th birthday. The family were only able to identify what was left of his body weeks later, burying his remains in Novosibirsk.
The verdict came ahead of the second anniversary of the killings.
“For us all it’s like yesterday,” Ivan Pomorin, who was filming the Crocus Hall concert at the time, told AFP.
Lawyers said some of the victims are still being treated for their wounds, while others have severe PTSD, unable to sleep, use public transport or be in crowded places.
The four gunmen — aged 20 to 31 at the time — worked in various professions, among them was a taxi driver, factory employee and construction worker.
They stood in the glass defendant’s cage, surrounded by security guards.
According to media reports, Mirzoyev’s brother was killed fighting in Syria, possibly leading to his radicalization.
Hours after the attack, Russian police brought them to court with signs of torture — including one barely conscious in a wheelchair.
- ‘Redeem guilt with blood’ -
The attack came two years into Moscow’s war in Ukraine, with Russia — bogged down by the offensive — dismissing prior US warnings of an imminent attack.
The Kremlin had suggested a Ukrainian connection at the time of the attack, but never provided evidence.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said after the verdict it was “reliably established” that the attack was “planned and committed in the interests of” Kyiv.
It accused the men of also plotting attacks in Dagestan.
TASS state news agency reported this month, citing a lawyer, that two of them — Dzhabrail Aushyev and Khusein Medov — had asked to be sent to fight in Ukraine instead of a life sentence.
Throughout its offensive, Russia has recruited prisoners for its military campaign, offering a buy-out from their sentences should they survive.
According to the lawyer quoted by TASS, Medov said he wanted to “redeem his guilt with blood.”
- Anti-migrant turn -
Russia — already undergoing a conservative social turn during the war — upped anti-migrant laws and rhetoric after the attack.
This has led to tensions with Moscow’s allies in Central Asia, some of whom have confronted Russia and called on it to respect the rights of their citizens.
Russia’s economy has for years been heavily reliant on millions of Central Asian migrants.
But their flow to Russia dipped after Moscow launched its Ukraine campaign and some Central Asians also held back from going to Russia after the post-Crocus migrant crackdowns.
