Headlines
Dalai Lama urges Aung San Suu Kyi to defend Rohingyas
Sydney, May 28
The Dalai Lama has urged
Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, to defend the ethnic
Muslim minority Rohingya group against persecution in Myanmar,
Australian media reported on Thursday.
The Tibetan spiritual
leader said he had brought up the subject in the past also but that Suu
Kyi, leader of Myanmar's political opposition, had responded by saying
it was a complicated issue.
"But in spite of that I feel she can
do something," said the Dalai Lama in an interview with The Australian
newspaper from his office in India.
Since sectarian violence
between Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar began in 2012, some 1.1 million
Rohingyas have been severely affected.
Official figures account for 140,000 Rohingyas living in deplorable conditions in refugee camps in Myanmar's state of Rakhine.
The
Tibetan leader emphasised that discrimination and violence against
Rohingyas was unjust, and appealed to Myanmar's Buddhists to "remember
the face of the Buddha" when dealing with the minority.
The
finding of clandestine graves of alleged illegal immigrants at the
beginning of May in southern Thailand was followed by a crackdown on
human trafficking that led to the collapse of the traffickers' networks.
The
traffickers are believed to have abandoned many boats in the Andaman
Sea, leaving men, women and children in a precarious condition.
Malaysian authorities also found 139 graves at 28 abandoned human trafficking camps near its border with Thailand.
According
to the UN, some 25,000 illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar
have taken to the boats in the first quarter of this year.