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REUTERS
SITTWE
MYANMAR'S army chief called on Thursday for people internally displaced by violence in Rakhine State to go home and rebuild communities, but he made no mention of 422,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape his force's operations.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, in a major speech on his plans for Rakhine state on his first visit there since the latest strife erupted, said the military had handled the situation as best as it could after a wave of coordinated attacks by Rohingya insurgents on Aug. 25.
The United Nations has said the military response to the insurgent attacks is ethnic cleansing aimed at pushing the Rohingya Muslim community out of Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Myanmar denies that, saying its forces are waging a legitimate campaign against Muslim terrorists who have been attacking and torching villages of Buddhists and other non-Muslims, some 30,000 of whom were internally displaced.
Min Aung Hlaing did not mention the accusation of ethnic cleansing in his speech to business people, officials and some of the displaced, in Sittwe, the state capital.
"Regarding the rehabilitation of villages of our national races, for the races who fled their homes, first of all they must go back to their places,"he said.
"National races"is a Myanmar term referring to members of officially recognised indigenous ethnic groups who make up the diverse nation.
