“We are here to help provide ideas and advice”, Kofi Annan was quoted as telling officials and leaders from the Buddhist Rakhine community amid jeering from demonstrators.
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Annan has been tasked by the leader of Myanmar’s new government Aung San Suu Kyi with finding ways to heal wounds in the bitterly divided and poor western state.
Mr Annan is expected to meet with Rakhine leaders and tour camps for the state’s internally-displaced Muslim population before leaving on Wednesday. The protester said she did not know who Annan’s team were and why they were in her country, but “I came here to protest as I don’t like them to come here”.
The plight of the Rohingya has raised questions about Myanmar leader and Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s commitment to human rights and represents a politically sensitive issue for her National League for Democracy, which won a landslide election victory a year ago.
Some 125,000 people are living in camps, the vast majority members of the Rohingya minority who are denied citizenship in Myanmar, where many members of the majority Buddhist community see them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Since the government announced his chairmanship of the new commission late last month, Annan has been the focus of criticism from Rakhine nationalist groups, who say a resolution to the state’s ongoing citizenship impasse and chronic underdevelopment should be devised without global involvement. They were reported to have viewed the nine-member commission as “foreigners’ biased intervention”.
The invitation reinforces Suu Kyi’s primacy on the worldwide stage as the real head of a government which she is technically barred from leading. “You will be able to assess for yourself of the roots of the problems itself, not in one day, not in one week. I am confident that you will get there, that you will find the answers because you are truly intent on looking for them”.
The commission will address human rights, ensuring humanitarian assistance, rights and reconciliation, establishing basic infrastructure and promoting long-term development plans in the state, announced the State Counsellor’s Office on August 24.
Recognizing the highly-charged nature of the divisions in the state, he said his advisory commission would listen to all sides.
“This first visit is an opportunity to listen and learn from you, the local people”, he said, as protesters continued to chant slogans outside the building where he made his brief remarks.
Annan is also scheduled to meet with President Htin Kyaw and military chief Min Aung Hlaing in capital Naypyidaw on the morning September 8.
But the region’s largest political group, the Arakan National Party, has already ruled out meeting the former United Nations secretary general.
Their plight threatens to poison democratic gains in the former army-run country and has damaged Suu Kyi’s reputation as a defender of the downtrodden.
Their appalling living conditions, including severe restrictions on movement, have pushed tens of thousands of them to flee, many via treacherous sea journey south toward Malaysia.
He said that if Annan “wants to meet us personally, not as a commission, then we can meet him to show respect”.
“Because of the conflict, we have been suffering for more than four years”, he said.
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But the issue remains incendiary to Buddhist hardliners.
