Hundreds protest in Myanmar over Suu Kyi’s panel on Rohingya Muslims

Hundreds in Myanmar rallied on Tuesday against an advisory commission led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan to find solutions to the conflict between the country’s Buddhists and minority Rohingya Muslims, which has cast a pall over democratic reforms.

 

 

Hundreds in Myanmar rallied on Tuesday against an advisory commission led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan to find solutions to the conflict between the country’s Buddhists and minority Rohingya Muslims, which has cast a pall over democratic reforms.

Local residents and Buddhist monks joined the protest overseen by dozens of police challenging what they perceived as “foreigners’ biased intervention” from the nine-member panel.

“We are here to help provide ideas and advice,” Annan told local officials and leaders from the Buddhist Rakhine community over the sound of demonstrators outside a government building.

“I don’t want to see foreigners involved in this commission. I want to see a commission involving people of the Rakhine nationality,” Kyaw Zin Wai, a 52-year-old carpenter told Reuters, adding that the two ethnic Rakhine commission members were not “representative” of people in the state.

More than 100 people were killed and some neighborhoods were razed to the ground as local ethnic Rakhine Buddhists clashed with Rohingya Muslims across the state in 2012. Some 125,000 people are still displaced, the vast majority of them Rohingya, who are prevented from moving freely.