Pope meets Suu Kyi, avoids mention of Rohingya crisis

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar — Pope Francis met with Myanmar leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi Tuesday, but avoided any public mention of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority who the U.S. says are being subjected to “ethnic cleansing.”

Francis spent his first full day in the Buddhist-majority country meeting its civilian leader, a day after hosting the military general in charge of the mission to drive Rohingya from the northern Rakhine state.

Image: Pope Francis meets Aung San Suu Kyi Image: Pope Francis meets Aung San Suu Kyi

Pope Francis meets Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyitaw, on Tuesday. Max Rossi / Reuters

The pontiff’s speech was the most anticipated of his visit, given the outcry over a crackdown that has sent more than 620,000 Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh from where they have reported entire villages were burned and looted, and women and girls were raped.

He previously has prayed for “our Rohingya brothers and sisters,” lamented their suffering and called for them to enjoy full rights, but the term “Rohingya” is avoided inside Myanmar because the ethnic group is not a recognized minority.

Several high-profile figures, including former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Myanmar Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, urged Francis not to utter the term, fearing a potential blowback against Myanmar’s tiny Catholic community.

The pope spoke obliquely, offering encouragement to the “to all those who are working to build a just, reconciled and inclusive social order.”

“The future of Myanmar must be peace, a peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of each member of society, respect for each ethnicity,” he said.

Hours earlier, he met the commander responsible for the crackdown, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

Image: Rohingya Crisis Image: Rohingya Crisis

A Rohingya girl looks in Bangladesh K M Asad / AFP – Getty Images file

The Vatican didn’t provide details of the contents of the 15-minute “courtesy visit,” except to say that “they spoke of the great responsibility of the authorities of the country in this moment of transition” and that the pair exchanged gifts. Francis gave the general a medallion of the trip, while the general gave the pope a harp in the shape of a boat, and an ornate rice bowl.

Rohingya Muslims have long faced state-supported discrimination in Myanmar, and were stripped of citizenship in 1982, denying them almost all rights and rendering them stateless. They cannot travel freely, practice their religion, or work as teachers or doctors, and they have little access to medical care, food or education. The Myanmar government and most of the country’s Buddhists consider the Rohingya Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living illegally in the country.

Myanmar’s army denies accusations of rape, torture, murder and forced displacement.

The latest violence erupted in August, when Myanmar security forces responded to militant attacks with a scorched-earth campaign that has sent many Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, where the pope will also visit on his trip.

Human rights groups had hoped the pope would not pull his punches in Myanmar.

“The Rohingya have little left besides their group name after years of statelessness, discriminatory restrictions on movement and access to life-sustaining services, and being targeted by a military subjecting them to ethnic cleansing and atrocities,” Phil Robertson, deputy director for Human Rights Watch in Asia, told Reuters earlier this month. “The Pope absolutely should stand up for the Rohingya by using the name Rohingya.”

In 2015, Pope Francis angered Turkey when he used the word “genocide” to describe the World War I mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

The Turkish government, which denies that the deaths constituted a genocide, recalled its ambassador to the Vatican in protest.

Alastair Jamieson reported from London.