Myanmar's embattled leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, called for national unity today and said she has created a committee that will coordinate all international and local assistance in violence-struck Rakhine state.
More than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from the state to neighboring Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when security forces responded to attacks by a militant Rohingya group with a broad crackdown on the long-persecuted Muslim minority.
Many houses were burned down. The U.N. has called the violence "textbook ethnic cleansing."
Suu Kyi acknowledged in a speech on state-run television that the country is facing widespread criticism over the refugee crisis, and called for unity in tackling the problem.
She said her government is holding talks with Bangladesh on the return of "those who are now in Bangladesh." She gave no details, but officials have suggested they would need to provide residency documents, which few have.
Myanmar's Buddhist majority denies that Rohingya Muslims are a separate ethnic group and regards them as having migrated illegally from Bangladesh, although many families have lived in Myanmar for generations.
Suu Kyi did not use the word "Rohingya" in her speech, but referred to several other ethnic minorities by name.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former political prisoner, has been widely criticized outside Myanmar for not speaking out on behalf of the Rohingya.
She said in her speech that those who return from Bangladesh would need to be resettled, without providing details, and that development must be brought to Rakhine, one of the country's poorest areas, to achieve a durable peace.
She said she would head the new committee, the "Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine," and that it would coordinate all efforts to create a "peaceful and developed Rakhine state."
The government has tightly restricted access to Rakhine for international aid groups and journalists.
Suu Kyi said her government has invited U.N. agencies, financial institutions such as the World Bank, and others to help develop Rakhine.
Myanmar officials deny there has been ethnic cleansing. Myanmar's ambassador to Japan, Thurain Thant Zin, told reporters in Tokyo today that his government was providing humanitarian aid to all affected by the violence and denied reports of human rights abuses by the military.
"To say the Myanmar military conducted those illegal acts is untrue and cannot be true," he said. "The Myanmar government protests the use of such terms as ethnic cleansing and genocide.
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