Aung San Suu Kyi Set To Break Silence On Rohingya Crisis In Live TV Address

Agencies
September 19, 2017

Yangon, Sept 19: Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is poised today to break her silence on a refugee crisis the UN has decried as "ethnic cleansing", in a live TV address that will be closely watched by nationalists in Myanmar who support an army-led campaign against Rohingya Muslims.

Communal violence has torn through Rakhine state since August 25, leaving hundreds dead and driving more than 410,000 of the Rohingya minority from Myanmar into Bangladesh.

But Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, has so far refused to speak up for the stateless Rohingya or publically urge restraint from the military.

Her intransigence in the face of huge international pressure has confounded a global community that once feted her as the champion of Myanmar's democracy struggle.

But inside Myanmar, supporters say the 72-year-old lacks the power to pull in the army, with whom she is in a delicate power-sharing arrangement. 

The UN has accused Myanmar's army of "ethnic cleansing" over a campaign of alleged murder and arson that has left scores of Rohingya villages in ashes.

The army denies that, instead insisting its operations are a proportional response to the late August raids by Rohingya militants, who they label "extremist Bengali terrorists".

Since then just under half of Rakhine's Rohingya population has poured into Bangladesh, where they now languish in one of the world's largest refugee camps.

A further 30,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists as well as Hindus have also been displaced -- apparent targets of the August 25 attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salavation Army (ARSA) militant group. 

Suu Kyi skipped this week's UN General Assembly in New York to manage the crisis at home and deliver her televised address -- the biggest yet of her time in office.

Hours before her speech, British Foreign Secretary called a meeting on the sidelines of the UN gathering, warning that the Rakhine violence was "a stain on the country's reputation" so soon after its transition to democratic rule.

It was a message that fell on deaf ears among the several hundred people gathered near Yangon's famous Sule Pagoda early Tuesday to watch the speech on a big screen.

"She will explain to the world the real situation in Rakhine," Thet Aung Htike, 38, told AFP.

"Western countries and the UN think that her government is badly treating the Bengali people. But there are a lot of Buddhist and Hindu people who have been killed by the terrorists. The world needs to understand this."

Siege mentality

Analysts say Suu Kyi must walk a treacherous line between global opinion and Islamaphobic anti-Rohingya views at home, where the military has curdled hatred for the Muslim minority.

"I'm worried that there is almost no possibility, given the political climate in Myanmar, for balancing the expectations of most of the country and the expectations of the international community," said Richard Horsey, an independent analyst based in Myanmar.

While stories of weary and hungry Rohingya civilians streaming into Bangladesh have dominated global headlines, there is little sympathy for the Muslim group among Myanmar's Buddhist majority.

Many reject the existence of a Rohingya ethnicity and insist they are "Bengalis" -- illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

That narrative has justified the denial of citizenship for the estimated one million Rohingya who lived in Rakhine before the recent crisis.

Loathing for the Rohingya has brought the public, including prominent pro-democracy activists, into an unlikely alignment with an army that once had them under its heel.

A seige mentality has emerged in Myanmar with the UN, international NGOs and foreign media the focus of ire for apparent pro-Rohingya bias.

Many Facebook users changed their profile picture on Tuesday to carry a banner with a photo of 'The Lady' and saying "We stand with you Daw Aung San Suu Kyi" -- using an honorific.

Tensions over the status of the Rohingya have been brewing for years in Myanmar, with bouts of anti-Muslim violence erupting around the country as Buddhist hardliners fan fears of an Islamic takeover.

Although the military stepped down from outright junta rule in 2011, it kept control of security policy and key levers of government.

Any overt break from the army's policy in Rakhine could enrage the generals and derail Suu Kyi's efforts to prevent a rollback on recent democratic gains.

Observers say the military may be deliberately destabilising her government with one eye on 2020 elections.

Commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing has emerged during the crisis as an unexpectedly popular figure, pitching himself as a defender Myanmar's territorial integrity and the Buddhist faith.

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Agencies
January 21,2020

New Delhi, Jan 21: With the IMF lowering India's economic growth estimate for the current fiscal to 4.8 per cent, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Tuesday claimed an attack on the world body and its chief economist Gita Gopinath by government ministers was imminent.

He also alleged that the growth figure of 4.8 per cent given by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is after some "window dressing" and he won't be surprised if it goes even lower.

"Reality check from IMF. Growth in 2019-20 will be BELOW 5 per cent at 4.8 per cent," Chidambaram said in a series of tweets.

"Even the 4.8 per cent is after some window dressing. I will not be surprised if it goes even lower," the former finance minister said.

IMF Chief Economist Gopinath was one of the first to denounce demonetisation, he noted.

"I suppose we must prepare ourselves for an attack by government ministers on the IMF and Dr Gita Gopinath," Chidambaram said.

The IMF lowered India's economic growth estimate for the current fiscal to 4.8 per cent and listed the country's much lower-than-expected GDP numbers as the single biggest drag on its global growth forecast for two years.

In October, the IMF had pegged India economic growth at 6.1 per cent for 2019.

Listing decline in rural demand growth and an overall credit sluggishness for lowering of India forecasts, Gopinath, however, had said the growth momentum should improve next year due to factors like positive impact of corporate tax rate reduction.

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Agencies
March 31,2020

Months after the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan city of central China, families of those deceased, who contracted the contagious infection, stood in long queues at funeral homes demanding to receive the cremated ashes of their loved ones.

Now this has spurred questions about the actual tally of COVID-19 related casualties in Wuhan, in a renewed pressure on the Chinese government that is already struggling to control its containment narrative of the pandemic spread.

Chinese media outlet Caixin showed how trucks carrying 2,500 urns with the ashes of the deceased COVID-19 cases were being shipped in a funeral home last week. Another picture published revealed how 3,500 urns were stacked within these funeral homes. It is therefore unclear how many urns have been filled in.

According to media reports, workers at several funeral parlors declined to provide any details as to how many urns were waiting to be collected, saying they either did not know or were not authorised to share the number.

Some families said they had been forced to wait for several hours to pick up the ashes. The photos circulated as mass deaths from the virus spiked in cities across the west, including Milan, Madrid and New York, where hospitals were erecting tents to handle the overflow as global infections soar past 500,000, with 24,000 dead.

According to Chinese government figures, 2,535 people in Wuhan have died of the virus. The announcement that a lockdown in place since January would be lifted came after the country said its tally of new cases had hit zero and stepped up diplomatic outreach to other countries hard hit by the virus, sending some of them medical supplies.

But some in China have been skeptical of the accuracy of the official tally, particularly given Wuhan's overwhelmed medical system, authorities' attempts to cover up the outbreak in its initial stages, and multiple revisions to the way official cases are counted.

Residents on social media have demanded disciplinary action against top Wuhan officials.

Many people who died had Covid-19 symptoms, but weren't tested and excluded from the official case tally, Caixin said. There were also patients who died of other diseases due to a lack of proper treatment when hospitals were overwhelmed dealing with those who had the coronavirus.

There were 56,007 cremations in Wuhan in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to data from the city's civil affairs agency. The number of cremations was 1,583 higher than those in the fourth quarter of 2018 and 2,231 higher than the fourth quarter of 2017.

Two locals in Wuhan who have lost family members to the virus said online that they were informed they had to be accompanied by their employers or officials from neighborhood committees when picking up the urns, likely as a measure against public gatherings.

COVID-19 is affecting 199 countries and territories around the world. Over 664,000 coronavirus cases have been registered globally out of which 30,890 have succumbed to the infection.

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Agencies
January 21,2020

Fifty-six journalists were killed in 2019 and most of them died outside conflict zones, a United Nations spokesperson said.

The number dropped by nearly half from the year 2018, but perpetrators enjoyed almost total impunity, Xinhua news agency quoted Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as saying on Monday citing Unesco figures.

The figure was published in the 'Unesco Observatory of Killed Journalists' on Monday.

In total, Unesco recorded 894 journalist killings in the decade from 2010 to 2019, an average of almost 90 per year. The number in 2019 was 99.

Journalists were murdered in all regions of the world, with Latin America and the Caribbean recording 22 killings, the highest number, followed by 15 in Asia-Pacific, and 10 in Arab States.

"The figures show that journalists not only suffer extreme risks when covering violent conflict, but that they are also targeted when reporting on local politics, corruption and crime - often in their hometowns," the Unesco said.

Almost two thirds (61 per cent) of the cases in 2019 occurred in countries not experiencing armed conflict, a notable spike in a wider trend in recent years, and a reversal of the situation of 2014, when this figure was one third.

More than 90 per cent of cases recorded in 2019 concerned local journalists, consistent with previous years, it added.

In response to these figures, Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of Unesco, said: "Unesco remains deeply troubled by the hostility and violence directed at all too many journalists around the world.

"As long as this situation lasts, it will undermine democratic debate."

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