Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed on Wednesday to work for “peace and national reconciliation” amid mounting international condemnation of a bloody Army crackdown on her country’s Muslim Rohingya minority.
Ms. Suu Kyi did not mention the violence in Rakhine State, but told a business forum in Singapore that multi-ethnic Myanmar needed to achieve stability to attract more investment.
Rohingya issue
She started a three-day visit to wealthy Singapore, the largest foreign investor in Myanmar after China, as international pressure mounted on her government to address the Rohingya crisis.
Crowds of Rohingya have flooded over the border into Bangladesh, making horrifying claims of gang-rape, torture and murder at the hands of security forces.
“As you know, we have many challenges. We’re a country made of many ethnic communities, and we have to work at achieving stability and rule of law which you in Singapore take pride in,” she said.
“Businesses do not wish to invest in countries which are not stable. We do not wish to be unstable but we’ve had a long history of disunity in our nation. So national reconciliation and peace is unavoidably important for us,” she said.
Criticism of Myanmar’s treatment of the minority Rohingya community has been intense in Indonesia and Malaysia. — AFP
