Doing our best to help all those in distress, says Aung San Suu Kyi

There is a small Hindu community in Rakhine, who were also caught up in the conflict and some of whom were killed

A day after addressing the international community over ongoing Rohingya crisis, Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has said Myanmar doing its best to help all those in distress and making no distinction between Muslims or Hindus or Rakhines.

She said she did not use the term Rohingya to refer to the Muslim minority facing persecution by the military, which the United Nations has accused of ethnic cleansing, in her first address to the Buddhist-majority nation on the crisis as she did not want to use "emotive" terms for an already affected population.

In an exlusive interview to ANI news agency, Suu Kyi, said, there has been a lot of controversy with regard to the term used to describe Muslims in Rakhine. She said, "Don't see any point in using terms that will simply inflame passions further."

"There are those (in Rakhine) who want to call themselves Rohingya and there are those who won't use any term except Bengali," she said.

About cause of the crisis, she said, "It is humanitarian issue which arose out of long term socio-economic problems and political of course."

Commenting on the solution to the crisis, Suu Kyi said "Amicable solution is to promote compassion", however, "You must know that it is the most difficult thing in the world to make, who are hostile to each other, learn to open their hearts and to accept the differences and make those differences strength and a bond between them.

"There is a small Hindu community in Rakhine, who were also caught up in the conflict and some of whom were killed," she added.

OneIndia News