Some 30,000 without food, shelter in Myanmar clashes

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar sit on a boat as they try to get into Bangladesh in Teknaf June 13, 2012. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj

SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of displaced Muslim Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists were in need of food, water and shelter in northwestern Myanmar on Thursday after fleeing the country's worst sectarian clashes in years.

Houses were burnt down late on Wednesday in two villages near the Bangladesh border, but there were no reports of further deaths. Scores of people are feared to have been killed in the rioting that broke out in Rakhine state on June 8.

Places that were flashpoints earlier in the week, including the state capital Sittwe, were quiet as violence started to subside after days of arson attacks and killings that have presented reformist President Thein Sein with one of his biggest challenges since taking office last year.

The violence had killed 29 people as of Thursday and displaced more than 30,000, said Htein Lin, secretary of the Ministry for Border Affairs. Around 2,500 houses have been burnt down.

"Tensions between the two groups have eased. There are around 20,000 refugees in Sittwe. Most of them are from the villages where people fled in fear of the violence," Aung Myat Kyaw, a senator for Rakhine state, told Reuters.

"They are in need of food and, because of the heavy rain, there are concerns about the refugees' health and whether they have enough shelter," he added.

The army has taken hundreds of Rohingyas to Muslim villages outside Sittwe to ensure their safety.

"They are worried for their lives. The army is there so their life is secure," said Shwe Maung, a Muslim member of parliament for the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party. "There are still so many Rohingyas in downtown Sittwe and they are afraid of being attacked."

The United Nations and a medical aid group said this week they were pulling staff out of the area because of the violence. U.N. special envoy for Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, travelled to the area on Wednesday.

DELICATE SITUATION

Speaking at an International Labour Organization conference in Geneva, the first stop on a five-nation European tour, Myanmar Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi expressed concern about the unrest and said laws needed to be enforced to prevent such conflicts from taking place.

"Without the rule of law, such communal strife will only continue," she told a news conference.

"The present situation will have to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity and we need the cooperation of all people concerned to rebuild the peace that we want for our country."

Food shortages could last three to four days as poor roads and infrastructure delayed supplies from aid organizations, said Htun Myit Thein of the Wan Latt Foundation, which is managing three camps that together hold about 12,000 people in Sittwe.

"The camps aren't clean enough and some of the men are getting ill," he said. "So far there is no support from the government or international groups."

It is unclear what sparked the rioting. Relations between the two communities have been uneasy for generations and tension flared last month after the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman that was blamed on Muslims.

That led to the killing of 10 Muslims in reprisal on June 3, when a Buddhist mob stopped a bus they were travelling on. The passengers had no connection to the murdered woman. State media said three Muslims are on trial for the woman's death.

The violence follows a year of dramatic political change after nearly 50 years of repressive military rule, which includes the release of hundreds of political prisoners and truces with ethnic minority rebels.

The government has also allowed trade unions and promised to get rid of forced labour. Recognizing this progress, the International Labour Organization lifted restrictions on Myanmar on Wednesday.

The communal violence in Rakhine state and the international reaction may prompt further change: the Rohingyas are not included among the officially recognized ethnic groups of Myanmar but Thein Sein may be forced to improve their plight.

Up to 800,000 Rohingyas live along Myanmar's border with Bangladesh in abject conditions. Neither country recognizes them as citizens and the Bangladeshi authorities have turned away boats of Rohingyas fleeing the violence this week.

United States urges Bangladesh not to send back Myanmar refugees

The US State Department has urged Bangladesh to “respect its international obligations” and allow fleeing Muslims from Myanmar to enter the country. Bangladeshi guards have turned back more that 660 Rohingya Muslims since Monday.

AP Photo/Fareed Khan
US urges Bangladesh not to send back Myanmar refugees

The United States on Wednesday voiced concern that Bangladesh was turning away Muslims fleeing religious violence in Myanmar and urged the Dhaka government not to send them back.

"We are concerned that Bangladeshi authorities appear to have intercepted and turned back persons fleeing the ethnic and religious violence in Burma," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, using Myanmar's former name.

"We have been urging the government of Bangladesh to respect its international obligations under the relevant refugee conventions and to continue its longstanding policy of non-refoulement of refugees," she said.

Non-refoulement refers to a principle of international law that forbids turning over a victim of persecution to his or her persecutor.

Bangladeshi guards have turned back 16 boats carrying more than 660 Rohingya Muslims, most of them women and children, since Monday as they tried to enter from Myanmar across the river Naf, according to local officials.

Around 25 people have been killed and a further 41 people were wounded in five days of unrest in western Myanmar between Buddhists and Muslims.

The Rohingya are considered one of the world's most persecuted groups, with Myanmar not officially recognizing them as a minority.

Rohingya children from Myanmar sit on a boat as they try to get into Bangladesh in Teknaf

Rohingya children from Myanmar sit on a boat as they try to get into Bangladesh in Teknaf June 13, 2012. The UN Refugee Office (UNHCR) has called on Bangladesh to keep its borders open given the rapid escalation of violence in the northern Rakhine State of Myanmar, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters on Tuesday. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj (BANGLADESH - Tags: SOCIETY IMMIGRATION CIVIL UNREST MARITIME)

UN Envoy Visits Burma’s Stricken Rakhine State

Vijay Nambiar, the U.N. envoy to Burma, leaves Sittwe Airport in Burma's Rakhine state, June 14, 2012.

BANKGOK - The U.N.’s special envoy to Burma, Vijay Nambiar, returned Thursday from a visit to Burma's western Rakhine state, where sectarian violence has killed 21 people and destroyed scores of homes.

Nambiar said he spoke with people caught up in the violence who are still "in a state of shock," and unwilling to return to their homes. There has been widespread violence in the area recently between Buddhists and Muslims, who are members of the ethnic minority known as the Rohingya.

Speaking to VOA by phone from the Burmese capital, Rangoon, he said the city of Maungdaw, where the conflict erupted, is now largely calm, but that the situation in the state's capital Sittwe is still tenuous and he was unable to visit some areas. Nambiar confirmed that 21 people died in the fighting.

Nambiar praised both the Border Affairs minister who traveled with him, and President Thein Sein, who responded by sending in the military to bring the situation under control, and declaring a state of emergency he described as "prompt, firm, and sensitive."

"This is an issue which has the potential of impacting on the entire reform process and requires to be handled very sensitively and in line with the international norms of international conduct," he said.

Burmese President Thein Sein said he is committed to equal justice and the rule of law in dealing with the aftermath of the conflict, he added.

Rohingya have long been viewed by the government and most Burmese as immigrants who are not entitled to citizenship or other benefits of the state. The recent fighting has led to a rash of inflamed rhetoric on websites and in domestic media coverage against Rohingya.

Violence broke out on June 3 when a mob of Buddhists in Rakhine allegedly attacked a bus and killed 10 Rohingya passengers in apparent retaliation for an earlier rape and murder of a Buddhist woman, allegedly by three Rohingya.

It will take time to address the longstanding ethnic and sectarian tensions, said Nambiar.

"I think increasingly everybody is conscious of the need to move away from such kind of ethnic stereotypes and characterizations of this nature because they realize that that is harmful to the entire project of reform," he said. "And I think while it is true that the messages that are being purveyed by being stressed by the top leadership need to filter down to the lower levels and there is still a lot of work to be done."

U.N. refugee agency official Preeta Law, a deputy representative in Burma, warned the fighting could have an impact on the effort to resettle Rohingya refugees now living in camps across the border in Bangladesh. "Of course in a situation of this kind of violence that's happened right now, in the immediate term, this would not be something that we would be looking at at this time," Law said.

Boats carrying women and children fleeing the violence have been turned back by the Bangladeshi government, despite the agency's plea to keep their border open.

 UN envoy visits unrest-hit Myanmar

A UN envoy arrived in Myanmay after a state of emergency was declared in Rakhine state, which has seen a deadly rise in sectarian violence. Bangladesh has turned down calls from the UN refugee agency UNHCR to let in the fleeing Rohingya.

AP Photo/Fareed Khan

UN envoy visits unrest-hit western Myanmar

A top UN envoy arrived in strife-torn western Myanmar on Wednesday as security forces grappled with sectarian violence that has left dozens dead and hundreds of homes burned down.
A state of emergency has been declared in Rakhine state, which has been rocked by a wave of rioting and arson, posing a major test for the reformist government which took power last year.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed in many areas.
Vijay Nambiar, UN chief Ban Ki-moon's special adviser on Myanmar, flew into the capital of Rakhine to visit Maungdaw, a town near the border with Bangladesh where the violence flared on Friday.
He was accompanied by Myanmar's Border Affairs Minister General Thein Htay and 15 Muslim religious leaders from Yangon.
"We're here to observe and assess how we can continue to provide support to Rakhine," Ashok Nigam, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator who was also in the group, told AFP.
An uneasy calm pervaded Sittwe, which has been rattled by gunfire in recent days and was drenched by heavy rains on Wednesday.
Local residents have been seen roaming the streets wielding knives, swords and sticks, while people from both the mainly Buddhist ethnic Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya communities have been forced to flee their homes.
The Buddhists and Rohingya have both accused each other of violent attacks.
The UN has evacuated most of its foreign staff from Maungdaw, which is its main base in the state and has a large population of stateless Rohingya Muslims.
Around 25 people have been killed and a further 41 people were wounded in five days of unrest, an official told AFP on Tuesday. He did not give details of how they died or whether they were Buddhists or Muslims.
Rohingya leaders say the real number of dead is much higher but AFP could not verify the allegation and has been unable to visit many of the affected areas for security reasons.
The toll does not include 10 Muslims who were killed on June 3 by a Buddhist mob in apparent revenge for the rape and murder of a woman, sparking the violence in Rakhine.
Rakhine, a predominantly Buddhist state bordering Bangladesh, is home to a large number of Muslims including the Rohingya, described by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities.
The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya to be foreigners, while many citizens see them as illegal immigrants and view them with hostility, describing them as "Bengalis".
Hundreds of Rohingya, many of them women and children, have attempted to flee to Bangladesh in rickety boats in recent days, but have been turned away.
Border guards on Wednesday said they had refused entry to another three vessels, although a single six-week-old baby girl found floating alone in a boat was rescued and placed with a local family.
The Dhaka government has rebuffed international calls, including by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, to let in the fleeing Rohingya.
The United States has urged an immediate halt to the sectarian unrest.
A leader of Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh camps appealed for help from Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday, accusing the democracy icon of ignoring the plight of the minority group, who the UN says has suffered decades of discrimination in Myanmar.
"Aung San Suu Kyi hasn't done or said anything for us, yet the Rohingyas including my parents campaigned for her in the 1990 elections," Mohammad Islam, of Nayapara camp in the border town of Teknaf, told AFP.
A spokesman for the opposition leader's National League for Democracy party said the former political prisoner had instructed him to work "to help both sides equally" before she left Wednesday on a historic trip to Europe.
The veteran activist, who will formally accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Saturday, has remained largely silent on the unrest apart from calling for "sympathy for minorities", while key figures in the democratic movement have said the Rohingya are not one of Myanmar's ethnic nationalities.

Burma’s Rohingya Dilemma

Yesterday in Rangoon I witnessed firsthand the tensions that are gripping not only Arakan State but also, increasingly, other parts of Burma.

Walking around the city, I saw Buddhists and Muslims smiling as they came and went from temples and mosques that were full of people praying for peace. At the same time, however, I noticed that police had been deployed near Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, the city’s most famous religious shrines.

Beneath its calm exterior, Rangoon seems to be bracing for an outbreak of sectarian conflict. The question on everyone’s lips is whether the violence in Arakan State will spread to Burma’s largest city, which is home to people of many faiths, including Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus.
Aung Zaw is founder and editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at aungzaw@irrawaddy.org.

One man I spoke to, a businessman, said that he has enough food and water in his house to last a month—just in case. He even confided that his stockpile included weapons.

But even as fear of religious conflict grips the city, there are many who insist that the situation in Arakan State is not really about religion at all. One prominent public figure taking this position is Ko Ko Gyi, the 88 Generation leader who last week declared that the “Rohingya issue”—that is, the status of Arakan State’s Muslim minority—is essentially a matter of sovereignty.

When I asked him what he meant by this, he said that it wasn’t for other countries to decide who qualifies to be recognized as a citizen of Burma. He said he sympathized with the Rohingya, many of whom have suffered as refugees in other countries, but added that they still could not be considered one of Burma’s 135 ethnic groups.

Some non-Burmese have reacted to Ko Ko Gyi’s remarks with a certain amount of consternation, believing that he, as a former political prisoner, should have stood up for the rights of an undeniably oppressed group. But inside Burma, his words were welcomed and spread quickly on Facebook, while local journals that reported his views soon sold out. The consensus among Burmese, it seems, is that the Rohingya are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh—a view that also treats this as an issue of sovereignty rather than religious animosity.

Indeed, many—especially ethnic Arakanese—have been resentful of the portrayal of this as a religious conflict, even though many have resorted to racial and religious slurs in their verbal attacks on the “Bengalis,” as they prefer to call the Rohingya.

The Arakanese are fiercely proud of their ethnic identity, even drawing a strong line between themselves and their fellow Buddhists, the ethnic Burman majority. In the minds of many Arakanese, then, this is a struggle to preserve that identity. They believe that if they don’t push back against the Rohingya, their own culture will be threatened by an influx of “aliens” from a country many times more populous than their own homeland.

For other observers, however, the concerns are very different, but no less pressing. Tin Oo, a veteran leader of the opposition National League for Democracy, which just months ago finally joined the government-led reform process by entering Parliament, told me he worried that the violence in Arakan State could delay this delicate transition to a more democratic form of governance.

As a former commander-in-chief of Burma’s armed forces who was once posted in Arakan State, Tin Oo said that the region has always had the potential to become a breeding ground for sectarian violence. If it finally realizes that potential now, it could be a serious setback for those arguing for the need to open the country further, he said.

So far, President Thein Sein has handled the situation in Arakan State carefully, imposing a state of military emergency under Section 413 of the country’s 2008 Constitution—the first since his government came into power last year—but also urging all sides to set aside their differences in a television address to the country.

“If we stick to endless hatred and revenge by killing each other, it’s possible that the danger will be more widespread, not only in Arakan State,” warned Thein Sein, adding that the country’s “fledgling democracy” could easily become a casualty of the violence.

I happened to be with a group of former generals during the broadcast of Thein Sein’s speech, but it was difficult to know what they thought about the issue. One who was sitting next to me signaled his agreement with the president’s words, but then fell silent, as if resigned to the cycle of violence that seems to fuel conflict after conflict in the country.

Many people I spoke with agreed that this was a major challenge for Thein Sein. “It’s not going to be an easy ride,” said one diplomat.

While it was still far from clear how this situation would turn out for the president, some observers seemed relieved when he allowed senior UN officials to visit Arakan State—in marked contrast to the former regime’s instinctive impulse to hide the country’s dirty laundry from the eyes of outsiders.

Some long-time political observers whispered, however, that hardline elements within the military may have had a hand in the violence, though they could offer no hard evidence. Others said that the army wanted to launch a military operation to drive out the Rohingya, but the president did not give the green light.

In an effort to increase transparency, last week the government formed a committee to investigate the rape and murder of an ethnic Arakanese woman that sparked the violence, as well as the lynching of a group of Muslims that led to a series of attacks and counterattacks by Rohingya and Arakanese mobs.

While many educated Burmese saw this as a step in the right direction, on the streets, popular opinion was more in favor of taking a hard line against the Rohingya.

Many decried the corruption of immigration officials, who they blamed for letting the “Bengalis” into the country in the first place. One wealthy businessman, who had hastily raised a large amount of money to donate to Arakanese displaced by the violence, even suggested building a strong fence to defend the country from further incursions.

Even a veteran political activist bristled when he heard that the US had expressed concern over the Rohingya issue. “I want to know how the US handles its border with Mexico and how they treated Muslims after 9/11,” he said angrily.

In the absence of any hard information about what is actually happening in Arakan State right now—due, in part, to government efforts to rein in “irresponsible” media—and the lack of a healthy, rational debate on the status of the Rohingya, it seems unlikely that the situation there will improve anytime soon. And that’s bad news for everybody.

Rohingya from Myamnar rally near Myanmar Embassy in Kuala Lumpur

An ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar and living in Malaysia holds a placard during a rally near the Myanmar embassy in Kuala Lumpur June 15, 2012. — Reuters pic

An ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar and living in Malaysia, holds a placard during a rally calling for a stop to the killings and violence toward the Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar, near the Myanmar embassy in Kuala Lumpur June 15, 2012. Thousands of displaced Muslim Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists were in need of food, water and shelter in northwestern Myanmar on Thursday after fleeing the country's worst sectarian clashes in years. Houses were burnt down late on Wednesday in two villages near the Bangladesh border, but there were no reports of further deaths. Scores of people are feared to have died in the rioting that broke out in Rakhine state on June 8. REUTERS/Samsul Said (MALAYSIA - Tags: CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT)

Myanmar conflict spurs hatred for Asia's outcasts

FILE - In this June 13, 2012 file photo, a Rohingya Muslim man who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape religious violence, cries as he pleads from a boat after he and others were intercepted by Bangladeshi border authorities in Taknaf, Bangladesh. Asia's more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on earth. Most live in a bizarre, 21st-century purgatory without passports, unable to travel freely or call any place home. The Myanmar government regards Rohingyas mostly as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, while Bangladesh rejects them just as stridently.

BANGKOK -- They have been called ogres and animals, terrorists and much worse - when their existence is even acknowledged.

Asia's more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on earth. Most live in a bizarre, 21st-century purgatory without passports, unable to travel freely or call any place home.

In Myanmar, shaken this week by a bloody spasm of violence involving Rohingyas that left dozens of civilians dead, they are almost universally despised. The military junta whose half-century of rule ended only last year cast the group as foreigners for decades - fueling a profound resentment now reflected in waves of vitriolic hatred that are being posted online.

"People feel it very acceptable to say that 'we will work on wiping out all the Rohingyas,'" said Debbie Stothard, an activist with the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, referring to hyperbolic Internet comments she called "disturbing."

The Myanmar government regards Rohingyas mostly as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact many of their families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Bangladesh rejects them just as stridently.

"This is the tragedy of being stateless," said Chris Lewa, who runs a non-governmental organization called the Arakan Project that advocates for the Rohingya cause worldwide.

"In Burma they're told they're illegals who should go back to Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, they're told they're Burmese who should go back home," Lewa said. "Unfortunately, they're just caught in the middle. They have been persecuted for decades, and it's only getting worse."

That fact was made painfully clear this week as Bangladeshi coast guard units turned back boatload after boatload of terrified Rohingya refugees trying to escape the latest violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state. Rohingyas have clashed with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and each side blames the other for the violence.

The boats were filled with women and children, and Bangladesh has defied international calls to let them in, saying the impoverished country's resources are already too strained.

A few have slipped through, however, including a month-old baby found Wednesday abandoned in a boat after its occupants fled border guards. Three other Rohingyas have been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the Bangladeshi town of Chittagong, including one who died.

The unrest, which has seen more than 1,500 homes charred and thousands of people displaced along Myanmar's western coast, erupted after a mob dragged 10 Muslims off a bus and killed them in apparent retaliation for the rape and murder last month of a 27-year-old Buddhist woman, allegedly by Muslims.

On Thursday, Rakhine state was reportedly calm. But Rohingyas living there "very much feel like they're trapped in a box," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. "They're surrounded by enemies, and there is an extremely high level of frustration."

The grudges go back far. Bitterness against the Rohingya in Myanmar has roots in a complex web of issues: the fear that Muslims are encroaching illegally on scarce land in a predominantly Buddhist country; the fact that the Rohingya look different than other Burmese; an effort by the former junta to portray them as foreigners.

Across the border in Bangladesh, civilians - not the government - are more tolerant. But even there, the Rohingya are largely unwanted because their presence in the overpopulated country only adds to competition for scarce resources and jobs.

Myanmar's government has the largest Rohingya population in the world: 800,000, according to the United Nations. Another 250,000 are in Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands more are scattered around other parts of the world, primarily the Middle East.

Human Rights Watch and other independent advocacy groups say Rohingyas are routinely discriminated against. In Myanmar, they are regularly subjected to forced labor by the army, a humiliation not usually applied to ethnic Rakhine who inhabit the same area, Lewa said.

The Rohingya must get government permission to travel outside their own villages and even to marry. Apparently concerned about their numbers growing, authorities have also barred them from having more than two children.

In 1978, Myanmar's army drove more than 200,000 Rohingyas into Bangladesh, according to rights groups and the U.S. Campaign for Burma. Some 10,000 died in squalid conditions, and the rest returned to Myanmar. The campaign was repeated in 1991-1992, and again a majority returned.

The Rohingya last garnered world headlines in 2009, when five boatloads of haggard migrants fleeing Myanmar were intercepted by Thai authorities. Rights groups allege they were detained and beaten, then forced back to sea, emaciated and bloodied, in vessels with no engines and little food or water. Hundreds are believed to have drowned.

The same year, Myanmar's consul general in Hong Kong - now a U.N. ambassador - described the Rohingya as "ugly as ogres" in an open letter to diplomats in which he compared their "dark brown" skin to that of the "fair and soft" ethnic Burmese majority.

The latest unrest has focused fresh attention on the Rohingyas' plight, but it has also galvanized a virulent new strain of resentment.

Many Burmese have taken to the Internet to denounce the Rohingya as foreign invaders, with some comparing them to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

While vitriol has come from both sides, what makes the latest unrest unique is that virtually "the entire population is openly and completely against" them, said Sai Latt, a writer and Myanmar analyst studying at Canada's Simon Fraser University.

"We have heard of scholars, journalists, writers, celebrities, even the so-called democracy fighters openly making comments against Rohingyas," Sai Latt said.

One Burmese actress posted "I hate them 100%" on her Facebook wall on Monday as the fires burned. By Thursday, her comment had nearly 250 "likes."

Prominent Burmese language journals have reported "only the Rakhine side," Sai Latt said. And many people have lashed out at foreign media, accusing them of getting the story wrong.

Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent former political prisoner released in January, has said Rohingyas should not be mistreated but added they "are not an ethnic group in Myanmar at all." He blamed the recent violence on illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

However, the leader of the country's democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, has shied away from the blame game, saying the problem should be tackled by fair application of the law.

Speaking in Geneva on a five-nation European tour, she said that "without rule of law, such communal strife will only continue.

"The present situation will need to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity," she told reporters.

The tide of nationalistic sentiment against the Rohingya puts Suu Kyi in a difficult position. Her conciliatory message risks alienating large blocs of supporters at a time when she and her National League for Democracy are trying to consolidate political gains attained after they entered Parliament for the first time in April.

The Rohingya speak a Bengali dialect similar to one spoken by residents of southern Bangladesh. And physically, they are almost indistinguishable from their Bangladeshi counterparts, said Lewa, of the Arakan Project.

But their history - specifically the amount of time they've lived in Myanmar, and who among them qualifies as a legitimate resident - is bitterly disputed.

Some say the Rohingya are descended from Arab settlers in the 7th century, and that their state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. Later waves arrived from British-run colonial India in the 1800s, but like the colonists themselves, they were regarded as foreigners.

That view persisted through half a century of military rule, which finally ended last year. Myanmar's post-junta government does not recognize them as one of the country's 135 indigenous national ethnic groups. And many people stridently believe they are not even a real ethnic group - rather, they are only illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

President Thein Sein, who has instituted a state of emergency and sent in troops to contain the violence, has warned any escalation could jeopardize the nation's fragile democratic reforms.

The International Crisis Group said that ironically, the nation's newfound freedoms may have helped contribute to the unrest.

"The loosening of authoritarian constraints may well have enabled this current crisis to take on a virulent intensity," the group said. "It is not uncommon that when an authoritarian state loosens its grip, old angers flare up and spread fast."

Associated Press writers Xinyan Yu, Jocelyn Gecker and Grant Peck in Bangkok and Frank Jordans in Geneva contributed to this report.

Q&A between journalists and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi regarding the current conflict in Rakhine state.

Swedish Daily:
My question concerned on the situation in the Rakhine state, the ongoing violence if I may. Now that 28 people dead and the violence seemed to be more intensive. How aware are you that this violence would escalate and have an impact on the democratic development in Burma and what do you think should be done in order to protect the Muslim community form discrimination which is one reason for the conflict? Thank you.

DASSK:
Of course I am concerned as I think everybody else in Burma is about the present situation in Rakhine. I think the most important lesson we need to learn is the need for the rule of law. We have said again and again, my party the National League for Democracy, that rule of law is essential if we are to put an end to all conflicts in the country. Everybody must have access to the protection of the law, and of course they also have duties to abide by the laws of the land. So without rule of law, such communal strikes will only continue and the present situation will have to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity and we need the corporation of all people concerned to regain the peace back we want for our country. You also mention about the Kachin state I think. Hostilities in the Kachin state. I understand that there are negotiations between the government the KIO with the regard to ceasefire. I just want to underline that fact that a ceasefire is not enough. In the end we have to have a political settlement, if there is to be the kind of peace that will be lasting and meaningful.

Norwegian Television:
Do you accept the Rohingyas as Myanmarnese citizen?

DASSK:
I said earlier that what we need is rule of law in the country we need very clear and precise laws with regards to citizenship to begin with. But I would like to mention here a very practical problem that we have to resolve in the Rakhine state. I think one of the greatest problems comes from the fear on both sides of the border, that is to say Bangladesh as well as Burma, that there will be illegal immigrant crossing all the time, this is due to the porous border. I think we need more responsible and incorrupt border vigilance.

Bloomberg News:
I am Jennifer Friedman with Bloomberg News, I have two quick questions, and I like to know should the Rohingya have citizenship and secondly do you feel that TOTAL and Chevron should pull out of the ventures with Myanmar oil and gas enterprise? Thank you.

DASSK:
As to the first question, I have already said that this should be resolved in accordance with rule of law because we have to be very clear about what the laws of citizenship are and who are entitled to them and to all those who are entitled to citizenship should be treated as full citizens deserving all the rights that must be given to them.