Monday, November 5, 2012

Suu Kyi refuses to be drawn on Rohingya issue: BBC

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Monday, 05 November 2012 13:34 Mizzima News

In an interview with the BBC on Saturday, Burma’s pro-democracy icon and human rights champion Aung San Suu Kyi said she could not speak out on the status of the Rohingya community which is denied citizenship.

People on both sides—Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims—had suffered from the communal violence in Rakhine State, she is reported to have said, adding that it was not her place to champion one side or the other.

“I am urging tolerance, but I do not think one should use one's moral leadership, if you want to call it that, to promote a particular cause without really looking at the sources of the problems,” she told the BBC.

The Nobel Peace prize laureate reportedly said that she had seen no statistics to show that 800,000 Rohingyas were being denied citizenship in Burma. However, she said that the much-criticized 1982 Citizenship Law that excludes them should be looked at, BBC reported.

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