NAYPYIDAW: US President Barack Obama met with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and other Myanmar lawmakers yesterday as he sought to turn around the Southeast Asian nation’s “backsliding” on much celebrated political reforms.
The meeting was held in Myanmar’s capital as Obama took time out from a summit that had been meant to heap praise on the country’s shift from army rule, but instead highlighted growing concerns over the transition.
Obama met Suu Kyi, a fellow Nobel laureate, and about a dozen other Myanmar lawmakers to discuss the reforms. “It was an excellent discussion about this transition process that’s taking place here in Myanmar around consolidating some of the gains that have been made but also pushing the group (on democracy and human rights),” Obama said.
Obama then met with his Myanmar counterpart Thein Sein after the East Asia Summit ended. The US leader set the tone for his three-day trip to Myanmar with hard-hitting comments on the pace of reforms in an interview with news website The Irrawaddy published just before he arrived on Wednesday. “Even as there has been some progress on the political and economic fronts, in other areas there has been a slowdown and backsliding in reforms,” Obama said.
“In addition to restrictions on freedom of the press, we continue to see violations of basic human rights and abuses in the country’s ethnic areas, including reports of extrajudicial killings, rape and forced labour.”
Obama planned to speak out on behalf of Muslim Rohingya minority in “all of his engagements”, his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said. Around 140,000 Rohingya languish in fetid displacement camps in western Rakhine State after religious violence flared two years ago. AFP
