Arakan News Agency
Secretary of the Arakan State government U Tin Maung Swe confirmed that around 10 locals protested the arrival of the Kofi Annan-led Arakan State Advisory Commission at the Sittwe airport on Friday morning.
U Tin Maung Swe noted that the number of protesters was significantly fewer than the hundreds who turned out for Kofi Annan’s first visit to Arakan State in early September. The nine commission members’ current three-day visit will take them to Buthidaung, Maungdaw, Minbyar townships and the ancient Arakancapital of Mrauk-U.
Mr. Annan and his delegation will tour rural Maungdaw on Saturday, where Burma Army intensified their brutal acts towards Rohingya Muslim in search of equal Right demanding group. The commission will go to Kyee Kan Pyin, the border police headquarters, and the villages of War Piek and Kyat Yoe Pyin.
Many of the civil society organizations from the state capital of Sittwe have claimed that they would not meet with Mr. Annan unless he would refrain from referring to the area’s Muslim community as “Rohingya,” the term with which the population self-identifies. The group is labeled by ethnic Buddhist —and many Burmese—as “Bengali,” implying that they are originally from Bangladesh.
On Thursday, Mr. Annan conducted a closed-door meeting with Buddhist and Muslim youth from Arakan State at Rangoon’s Center for Diversity and National Harmony. He also held talks with Arakan historian Dr. Aye Chan, divisional Arakan ethnic affairs minister U Zaw Aye Maung, Reuters’ Burma correspondent U Aung Hla Tun, as well as local politicians, at Sule Shangri-La Hotel in the commercial capital.
source/image: Irrawaddy
