Burma rejects 'unbalanced' Rohingya remarks by Nobel prize winners

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Desmond Tutu and José Ramos-Horta among laureates who have criticised the situation of Rohingya in Burma as ‘nothing less than genocide’

 A Rohingya girl suffers from infected heat rash on her face and body in Sittwe, Burma. More than 100,000 Rohingya Muslims are confined to internal camps. Photograph: Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images

Associated Press in Yangon

Sunday 31 May 2015 06.25 

Burma rejected as unbalanced comments made by several Nobel peace prize winners calling for an end to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims.

The Nobel laureates including South Africa’sDesmond Tutu, Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi and former Timor-Leste President José Ramos-Horta made the appeal following two conferences in the Norwegian capital last week. They called the situation of Rohingya in Burma “nothing less than genocide”

Burma’s foreign ministry said in a statement published in Sunday’s newspapers that such comments turned a blind eye to Burma’s efforts on rebuilding trust between Buddhists and Muslims in western Rakhine state as well as “granting citizenship through national verification process to those Bengalis living in Burma for many years”.

Burma does not recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic community and refers to the more than one million members in Rakhine state as Bengalis – immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. They have been denied citizenship and basic rights. More than 100,000 are confined to internal camps.

In recent weeks, the plight of Rohingya has turned into a regional crisis when thousands landed on the shores of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, with others still believed stranded at sea.

The foreign ministry said Burma categorically rejects the “unbalanced and negative comments”.

Others who criticised Burma’s policies in Oslo included philanthropist George Soros, who escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary and said that there were “alarming” parallels between the plight of the Rohingya and the Nazi genocide.