Suu Kyi: Rohingya situation could have been better

hanoi - The Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi believes in retrospect that her government would have been better able to tackle the situation in the state of Rakhine.

After government forces in Rakhine were violently acting in response to attacks by the Rohingya insurgents on thirty police stations, some 700 000 Rohingyas have fled the region. Suu Kyi received criticism because she did not condemn human rights violations against the Rohingya minority.

'There are, of course, ways in which, in retrospect, the situation could have been better addressed,' Suu Kyi said at the World Economic Forum at the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. 'But we believe that in order to get safety and stability in the long term, all parties must be honest. '

Suu Kyi also said that the two Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who have been sentenced to seven years in prison for violating a law on state secrets, have the opportunity to appeal. According to the government leader, the sentence had nothing to do with freedom of expression.

'I wonder if many people actually read the statement,' she said in Hanoi. 'It had nothing to do with freedom of speech. It had to do with the law on state secrets. If we believe in the rule of law, they have every right to appeal and to indicate why the statement is wrong. '