U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that the displacement of a third of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority can be described as ethnic cleansing.

“When one third of the Rohingya population has got to flee the country, can you find a better word to describe it?” he responded when asked if he agreed that the crisis constituted ethnic cleansing. 

“I call on Myanmar authorities to suspend military action, end the violence, uphold the rule of law and recognize the right of return of all those who had to leave the country,” Guterres told reporters. “Muslims of Rakhine state must be granted nationality or, at least for now, a legal status so they can lead a normal life.”

The U.N. Security Council held a meeting Wednesday on the violence and subsequent humanitarian crisis in Rakhine state. The meeting was requested by Britain and Sweden on Monday after U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein referred to the treatment of the Rohingya as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has canceled plans to attend this month’s United Nations General Assembly amid rising international criticism of her handling of the violence in western Myanmar that has forced as many as 370,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border to Bangladesh. 

Government spokesman Zaw Htay said Wednesday that the Nobel Peace laureate will remain in Myanmar to deal with the ongoing security situation.

The spokesman also announced that Aung San Suu Kyi would be giving a televised address next week, on September 19, to “speak for national reconciliation and peace” in her first public comments on the crisis in Rakhine state.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been held up as an icon of democracy due to her decades-long detention under Myanmar’s former military rulers. But her apparent indifference to the plight of the Rohingyas in Rakhine state — she has dismissed many reports of the situation as “fake information” designed to promote the interests of “terrorists” — has brought scorn from governments and human rights activists, including a number of her fellow Nobel Peace laureates.

The violence first erupted on August 25, when a group of Rohingya militants attacked dozens of police posts and an army base in what they said was an effort to protect their ethnic minority from persecution. About 400 people have been killed in subsequent clashes and a military counteroffensive that has triggered the current exodus.

“I have condemned attacks by Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. But in Rakhine State there have been disturbing reports of attacks by security forces against civilians, which are completely unacceptable,” U.N. Secretary General Guterres said Wednesday.

The Rohingya are one of Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities in the Buddhist-majority nation. They are considered to be economic migrants from Bangladesh and have been denied citizenship, even though most can show their families have been in the country for generations.
…