Myanmar President Win Myint
Myanmar’s president said Saturday it had been an “auspicious” year for Rakhine state, the violence-scarred territory and epicentre of the Rohingya crisis.
More than 720,000 Rohingya have fled the western state since August 2017 after the military conducted “clearance operations,” sending a stream of refugees to neighbouring Bangladesh with accounts of rape, arson and mass killings — acts that UN investigators say amounts to “genocide” by the military generals.
Another 120,000 of the stateless minority, who are largely reviled by ethnic Rakhine and have garnered little sympathy among the Myanmar public, have been forced to live in displacement camps in the region with bleak conditions and a dire lack of food.
But Myanmar President Win Myint painted a different reality in a statement Saturday when he congratulated the “ethnic brothers and sisters” on the 44th anniversary of the Rakhine State Day.
With no natural disasters, “we…
