Minister of the Office of State Counselor of Myanmar Kyaw Tint Swe arrives in the capital tonight to discuss the Rohingya issue with Bangladesh authorities.

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi is sending the minister as her representative to Dhaka for discussing the Rohingya issue with Bangladesh government amid growing international pressure on Myanmar following exodus of over five lakhs of its nationals in Bangladesh.

During his visit, the Myanmar minister will hold meeting with Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali tomorrow.

The Myanmar minister will not visit Cox’s Bazar to see the plight of Rohingya people, who were forcibly displaced by Myanmar government, although Dhaka earlier made a request to Naypyidaw in this regard.

Over half a million Rohingyas have taken shelter in Bangladesh since Aug 25 when the military crackdown began in the northern Rakhine State over alleged terrorist attacks on security outposts.

International pressure has been mounted on Myanmar for violence against Rohingya people in Rakhine state where another 250,000 faced the risk of displacement. </s> SINGAPORE (AP) — Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed has sharply criticized Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi for her handling of an ethnic crisis that led to mass killings and the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from her country.

Mahathir said Tuesday that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi is "trying to defend the indefensible" in justifying violence by Myanmar security forces against Rohingya in Rakhine state.

He said that as a former political prisoner, Suu Kyi should understand suffering.

Mahathir was asked about the issue at a news conference on the sidelines of a regional summit in Singapore.

Suu Kyi became an icon for democracy after spending about 15 years under house arrest for opposing Myanmar's earlier military dictatorship. She has been severely criticized for her handling of the Rohingya. </s> The plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims reached a grim benchmark on Tuesday, with the United Nations estimating that more than 123,000 refugees have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in less than two weeks to escape persecution. Yet amid a crisis increasingly described as genocide, Myanmar’s state counselor and former Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, has remained conspicuously silent.

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group from Rakhine state, where they have limited rights and are classified as illegal immigrants rather than citizens. They have long been victims of state-sponsored discrimination and abuse ― including what the U.N. has deemed possible crimes against humanity.

Rohingya militants attacked government security posts on Aug. 25, triggering renewed violence and a brutal retaliation by government forces that has prompted this latest exodus. In addition to those who have fled the country, tens of thousands of Rohingya are internally displaced.

But Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner and activist during Myanmar’s decades-long military dictatorship, has kept quiet in the face of mounting international pressure to address the unfolding crisis. Her inaction has even stirred discussion of revoking the Nobel Peace Prize she won in 1991 for “her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.”

Suu Kyi declared that she wanted to run for president in Myanmar’s 2015 election, but the country’s constitution barred her from doing so because she had married a foreigner and had foreign children. The role of state counselor, which is similar to prime minister, was instead established for her in 2016.

“The Muslims are starving in their homes. Markets are closed and people can’t leave their villages, except to flee. There is widespread intimidation by the authorities, who are clearly using food and water as a weapon,” a humanitarian official told Amnesty International.

As state counselor, Suu Kyi does not have authority over the security forces committing the alleged and documented atrocities against Rohingya Muslims, but there are still many ways she could help to ameliorate the situation, according to Tirana Hassan, Amnesty’s director for crisis response.

“Aung San Suu Kyi is the civilian arm of the government. She can immediately do the right thing. She can allow the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission in, for example, instead of not cooperating with the Mission,” Hassan told HuffPost from Bangladesh, referring to the U.N.’s blocked efforts to conduct an independent international inquiry into the violence in Rakhine state.

“Thus far, we have seen absolutely no attempt to do that, and it’s incredibly disappointing,” she noted. “The restrictions on humanitarian aid, the stopping of food aid and the inability to provide shelter services is the perfect storm for a humanitarian disaster.”

“It’s a very important day for Muslims. All of these people I saw coming across [the border] were Muslims, and I remember feeling particularly heartbroken, because it’s supposed to be a celebratory day for them,” Thapa told HuffPost from Bangladesh.

But for many refugees arriving in Bangladesh, the living conditions are still abysmal. “There’s no shelter for them. There’s nothing,” said Thapa. “They’re literally sitting by roadsides, hillsides and under trees and bushes. They have nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing.”

She believes Suu Kyi “has chosen to take the side of the majoritarian population” in Myanmar, which has an overwhelmingly Buddhist population. State media outlets in the country have been especially disparaging of Rohingya Muslims, reportedly referring to them as “morally bad” and “human fleas.”

“It’s very disappointing. I wish [Suu Kyi] would recognize that she is leader of everyone in the country, not just the majority,” said Thapa. “It’s time for her to show leadership and to call on security forces to stop these egregious violations, but she’s not showing any inclination to do so.” </s> In this March 15, 2016 photo, Aung San Suu Kyi walks in Myanmar's parliament in Naypyitaw. Suu Kyi has expelled dissident party members, neglected to groom successors, spoken rarely to the press and apparently made command decisions rather than seeking help from capable advisers. | AP

YANGON: Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai and mainly Muslim countries in Asia led a growing chorus of criticism on Monday aimed at Myanmar and its civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi over the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Nearly 90,000 Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh in the past 10 days following an uptick in fighting between militants and Myanmar's military in strife-torn western Rakhine state.

The impoverished region bordering Bangladesh has been a crucible of communal tensions between Muslims and Buddhists for years, with the Rohingya forced to live under apartheid-like restrictions on movement and citizenship.

The recent violence, which began last October when a small Rohingya militant group ambushed border posts, is the worst Rakhine has witnessed in years, with the UN saying Myanmar's army may have committed ethnic cleansing in its response.

Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner of Myanmar's junta, has come under increasing fire over her perceived unwillingness to speak out against the treatment of the Rohingya or chastise the military.

She has made no public comment since the latest fighting broke out on August 25.

"Every time I see the news, my heart breaks at the suffering of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar," Pakistani activist Yousafzai, who famously survived being shot in the head by the Taliban, said in a statement on Twitter.

"Over the last several years I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment. I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same," she added.

"Very frankly, I am dissatisfied with Aung San Suu Kyi," Anifah told AFP.

"(Previously) she stood up for the principles of human rights. Now it seems she is doing nothing."

The growing crisis threatens Myanmar's diplomatic relations, particularly with Muslim-majority countries in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia and Indonesia where there is profound public anger over the treatment of the Rohingya.

The Maldives announced on Monday that it was severing all trade ties with the country "until the government of Myanmar takes measures to prevent the atrocities being committed against Rohingya Muslims", the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Indonesia's Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi met Suu Kyi as well as Myanmar's army chief General Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw on Monday in a bid to pressure the government to do more to alleviate the crisis.

"Once again, violence, this humanitarian crisis has to stop immediately," Indonesian President Joko Widodo told reporters on Sunday as he announced Retno's mission.

Hours before Widodo spoke, a petrol bomb was thrown at Myanmar's embassy in Jakarta while police there have previously thwarted two attempts by Islamist militants to bomb the compound.

Dozens demonstrated in front of the embassy on Monday, where armed police were deployed and the mission cordoned off behind barbed wire.

Pakistan's foreign ministry said it was "deeply concerned over reports of growing number of deaths and forced displacement of Rohingya Muslims" and urged Myanmar to investigate reports of atrocities against the community.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif added in a recent tweet: "Global silence on continuing violence against #Rohingya Muslims. Int’l action crucial to prevent further ethnic cleansing - UN must rally."

Analysts have long warned that Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya would lead to homegrown militancy as well as support from international jihadists.

Since the latest fighting broke out, Al-Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen has called for retaliatory attacks against Myanmar while the Afghan Taliban urged Muslims to "use their abilities to help Myanmar's oppressed Muslims".

Thousands gathered in Russia's Chechnya region Monday for an officially staged rally over the plight of the Rohingya.

Defenders of Suu Kyi say she has limited ability to control Myanmar's notoriously abusive military, which under the junta-era constitution is effectively independent of civilian oversight.

The Rohingya are also widely dismissed in Myanmar as Bangladeshi interlopers despite many tracing their lineage back generations, making supporting them hugely unpopular.

But detractors say Suu Kyi is one of the few people with the mass appeal and moral authority to swim against the tide on the issue. </s> Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed has sharply criticised Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi for her handling of an ethnic crisis that led to mass killings and the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from her country.

Mr Mahathir said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ms Suu Kyi was “trying to defend the indefensible” in justifying violence by Burmese security forces against the Rohingya in Rakhine state.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since August 2017.

Mr Mahathir said: “They are actually oppressing these people to the point of, well, killing them, mass killing, and burial in graves dug by the victims and that kind of thing.

“That may be relevant in ancient times, but in modern days, we don’t do that kind of thing.”

The 93-year-old political veteran’s own past treatment of dissidents was sharply criticised.

When asked about the issue at a news conference on the sidelines of a summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) in Singapore, Mr Mahathir said that as a former political prisoner, Ms Suu Kyi should understand suffering.

It is highly unusual for leaders in the 10-nation group to publicly criticise each other.

Ms Suu Kyi became an icon for democracy after spending about 15 years under house arrest for opposing Burma’s military dictatorship.

She and her government have been widely criticised for the way they have treated the Rohingya. </s> Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi met President Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday on her first visit to the United States since her party won a sweeping victory in last year’s election, capping a decades-long journey from political prisoner to national leader.

With Suu Kyi no longer an opposition figure, the United States is weighing a further easing of sanctions against Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, as Obama looks to normalise relations with a country Washington shunned when it was ruled by a military junta.

Suu Kyi also was expected to meet other US officials including Secretary of State John Kerry and senior members of Congress.

“Before it was very much encouraging her (Suu Kyi) and supporting her in her role as someone pushing for increased democracy. Now they (US officials) are meeting someone in charge of the government,” said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia expert at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Obama is expected to consult with Suu Kyi on whether to further ease US sanctions to help investment and the democratic transition in her country, the White House said.

As Suu Kyi arrived at the White House, Obama issued a statement saying he would reinstate Myanmar to the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), which provides duty-free treatment for goods from poor and developing countries.

Myanmar was removed from GSP benefits in 1989 following pro-democracy uprisings a year earlier that were brutally suppressed by the ruling military junta.

The United States eased some sanctions against Myanmar earlier this year to support political reform but maintained most of its economic restrictions with an eye toward penalizing those it views as hampering the democratically elected government.

With Suu Kyi in Washington, officials in Myanmar said the government there was making a push to overhaul rules on new foreign investment this week.

New investment approvals have fallen since Suu Kyi took power in April and some businesses and investors have criticized her for failing to prioritize the economy.

Separately, a group of 46 non-governmental organizations circulated a letter they wrote to Obama on Monday expressing concern about reports of plans to ease sanctions on Myanmar while human rights abuses by the military and against Rohingya Muslims persisted.

“While incremental progress is being made in Burma, it is vital that the US continue to act in support of Burma’s people, particularly those still suffering under the current government,” the letter said.

“To lift sanctions prior to tangible change for suffering communities would be a disservice to those vulnerable peoples who deserve international protection,” it said.

On Wednesday, Senator Bob Corker, the chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized what he described as Suu Kyi’s “dismissive” reaction to concerns he had raised about her country’s record on human trafficking.

“After witnessing her lack of regard for Burma’s dismal track record on this issue, I plan to pay very close attention to her government’s efforts to prevent innocent human beings from being trafficked and sold into forced labor and sex slavery,” Corker said in a statement released to Reuters after a breakfast meeting with Suu Kyi and Vice President Joe Biden.

Myanmar’s military stepped back from direct control of the country in 2011 after 49 years in power, but maintains a commanding role in politics, controlling 25 per cent of the seats in Parliament and leading three key ministries.

Suu Kyi is barred from being president under a military-drafted constitution because her sons are not Myanmar citizens. She serves instead as the country’s de facto leader by holding the positions of foreign minister and state counselor.

She faces the challenge of guiding Myanmar’s relationship with the United States and neighboring China, which enjoyed a preferential relationship with the military government.

“The US-Myanmar dynamic, it is not a close strategic relationship to the exclusion of China but introducing more balance,” said Richard Horsey, an independent political analyst in Yangon.

There are also formidable obstacles at home for the popular Nobel laureate.

Suu Kyi has been criticized by rights groups for failing to address the plight of the country’s stateless Rohingya minority. About 125,000 remain confined to squalid camps on the country’s western coast following violence between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012.

Last week, a commission Suu Kyi set up and charged with making recommendations on the situation and which is led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan traveled to Myanmar for the first time.

“It is clear that in setting up the Annan Commission, Suu Kyi is not merely looking for some diplomatic cover, but is making Rakhine State a priority and is serious about taking steps to address the situation,” Horsey said. </s> “The world remains silent in the face of the massacre of Rohingya Muslims,” Farida, an Indonesian who organized the protest and uses only one name, told reporters.

The Pakistan Foreign Ministry and the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, deplored the violence and displacement of Rohingya refugees and called for an investigation of the reported massacres.

Amid the protests, a fellow peace prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai, took to Twitter to confront Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, asking her to condemn the violence. Some wondered whether the Nobel Committee, which conferred the honor on her in 1991, would publicly criticize her or could even revoke the prize.

Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, appeared to go even further, suggesting Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi should intervene on behalf of the Rohingya.

“That’s what we would expect from any government, to protect everybody within their own jurisdiction,” Ms. Lee told the BBC on Monday. “She is caught between a rock and a hot spot, but I think it’s time for her to come out of that spot now,”

The latest violence in Myanmar began last month when Rohingya militants attacked Myanmar military positions. They said they were trying to prevent further persecution by the country’s security forces.

The military responded with what it has called “clearance operations.” According to human rights groups, soldiers razed hundreds of Rohingya homes in Rakhine State. As a result, thousands of Rohingya have made the treacherous journey to squalid refugee camps across the border.

Their plight has drawn increased attention — and renewed criticism — from many people around the world.

“Over the last several years, I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment,” Ms. Yousafzai, a Pakistani Muslim and the youngest recipient of the Nobel, said in a Twitter post on Monday. “I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same. The world is waiting and the Rohingya Muslims are waiting.”

Last year, a group of Nobel laureates — including Ms. Yousafzai, Desmond Tutu and 11 other recipients — signed an open letter that “warned of the potential for genocide.”

Some critics of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi blamed her for the crisis and called for her prize to be revoked. Those appeals are particularly poignant given Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s history as a political prisoner. She spent 15 years under house arrest after winning a presidential election in 1988, which the ruling junta at the time refused to honor.

Under a constitutional power-sharing agreement, she was appointed state counselor after her party, the National League for Democracy, won in a landslide election in 2015. Still, under the law, she cannot become president and the military effectively controls many of the state’s levers of power.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has been conspicuously silent on the Rohingya issue, and when pressed by reporters, she has toed the official line of the military, which contends that the Rohingya are illegally squatting inside Myanmar.

“No, it’s not ethnic cleansing,” she said in a rare interview on the subject in 2013.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is not the first Nobel laureate to stir controversy. In the past, activists have called on the committee to revoke the awards of Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama. In 1994, one member of the Nobel Committee resigned in protest when the award was shared among the Israeli leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. The committee member, Kaare Kristiansen, called Mr. Arafat a “terrorist” who did not deserve the prize.

The Nobel Committee, all Norwegian citizens appointed by the country’s Parliament, will not rescind Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s prize, said Gunnar Stalsett, a former committee member.

“A peace prize has never been revoked and the committee does not issue condemnations or censure laureates,” said Mr. Stalsett, a former politician and bishop who was a deputy member of the committee in 1991, when Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi received her award.

“The principle we follow is the decision is not a declaration of a saint,” Mr. Stalsett said. “When the decision has been made and the award has been given, that ends the responsibility of the committee.” </s> YANGON: Myanmar´s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday alleged a "huge iceberg of misinformation" was distorting the picture of the Rohingya crisis, which has forced 125,000 of the Muslim minority to flee to Bangladesh.

In her first comments since Rohingya militant attacks sparked unrest on August 25, Suu Kyi said fake news was "calculated to create a lot of problems between different communities" and to promote "the interest of the terrorists".

Her intervention, quoted on the Facebook page of her State Counsellor´s office, followed a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has led the global chorus of condemnation of a Myanmar army crackdown on the Rohingya.

Suu Kyi decried the "fake information" spread on Twitter last week by the Turkish deputy prime minister who shared photos purporting to be dead Rohingya that were later proven not to relate to the current crisis.

"Terrorism is new (for Myanmar) but the Government will do its best to make sure that this does not expand and spread all over Rakhine," she was quoted as saying.

Hundreds have died since Rohingya militants raided police posts in Myanmar´s Rakhine State.

Over 6,0000 homes have been torched and there has been an exodus of Rohingya -- who are reviled in Myanmar and denied citizenship -- across the border into Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has come under intense pressure over her refusal to speak out against the treatment of the Rohingya or chastise the military.

Analysts say her obduracy despite the years of pressure from rights groups is a sop to the still powerful army and surging Buddhist nationalism in the Southeast Asian country. </s> Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Aung San Suu Kyi, seen here at a business summit in Singapore on Monday

Amnesty International is stripping Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi of its highest honour, the Ambassador of Conscience Award.

The politician and Nobel peace prize winner received the honour in 2009, when she was living under house arrest.

The rights group said it was profoundly dismayed at her failure to speak out for the Rohingya minority, some 700,000 of whom have fled a military crackdown.

This is the latest honour in a string of awards Ms Suu Kyi, 73, has lost.

"We are profoundly dismayed that you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defence of human rights," Amnesty's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo wrote in a letter to the Myanmar leader.

"[Her] denial of the gravity and scale of the atrocities [against the Rohingya] means there is little prospect of the situation improving," Mr Naidoo said.

The organisation, which once feted her as a beacon for democracy, announced its decision on the eighth anniversary of Ms Suu Kyi's release from house arrest.

Revoked one by one

Nick Beake, BBC Myanmar correspondent

Aung San Suu Kyi's unswerving pursuit of democracy for Myanmar in the face of a brutal military dictatorship brought her nearly 15 years of house arrest. It also spurred a succession of governments, cities and human rights groups around the world to bestow their honours upon her.

As far back as 1989, Amnesty International declared Ms Suu Kyi a "prisoner of conscience" and 20 years later awarded her its most prestigious award. Nelson Mandela had been a previous recipient.

Now, Amnesty International has written to Ms Suu Kyi saying it's withdrawing its prize because - as they put it - "we can no longer justify her status as an Ambassador of Conscience".

United Nations investigators concluded that, while she was not complicit in the alleged genocide last year, she had failed to use her moral authority to help prevent the murder and rape of thousands of Rohingyas by the still-dominant army.

One by one, the freedoms, fellowships and even an honorary citizenship have been revoked for a civilian leader who stubbornly denies crimes against humanity have taken place on her watch.

Ms Suu Kyi came to power as the de facto head of Buddhist-majority Myanmar's civilian administration in 2016.

She has since faced international pressure, including from Amnesty International, to condemn the army's alleged brutality against the Rohingya. However she has refused to do so.

She has also defended the jailing of two Reuters journalists investigating the killing of Rohingya Muslims.

The last time Ms Suu Kyi spoke to the BBC in April 2017, she said: "I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening."

Her government claims it will begin to welcome back the first groups of refugees later this week as part of a deal with Bangladesh, which has alarmed the UN and aid agencies.

The UN refugee agency wants Rohingya families to be able to return to their former villages and decide for themselves if they feel they are able to live there safely and with dignity.
Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi receives international criticism and pressure urging her to help the Rohingya.