Yangon: Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi
arrived on her first visit to conflict-battered northern
Rakhine State today, an official said, an unannounced trip to
an area that has seen most of its Rohingya Muslim population
forced out by an army campaign.
Suu Kyi, a nobel laureate who leads Myanmar's pro-
democracy party, has been hammered by the international
community for failing to use her moral power to speak up in
defence of the Rohinyga.
Thousands of others are believed to still be camped on a
beach near Maungdaw awaiting boats to Bangladesh in
increasingly parlous conditions.
The Rohingya are hated in Buddhist-majority Myanmar,
where they are denied citizenship and widely dismissed as
illegal "Bengali" immigrants.
Observers say Suu Kyi has chosen not to criticise the
army in fear of a backlash from a powerful institution that
controls all security matters.
The plight of the Rohingya also garners little sympathy
inside Myanmar, making any defence of the minority a
politically unpopular cause amid surging Buddhist nationalist
sentiment.
The Rohingya have packed into makeshift camps on a poor,
already overcrowded slip of border land inside Bangladesh.
Aid groups say the risk of major outbreaks of disease is
high while they struggle to deliver food and basic supplies to
the unprecedented number of refugees.