FM Davutoğlu pledges to help Rohingya Muslims

NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar

Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoğlu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s wife Emine Erdoğan distribute aid packages to Muslims in camps in Myanmar. AA photo

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s wife Emine Erdoğan visited Rohingya Muslims staying at the Banduba camp on Aug. 10.

They brought the respect of the Turkish people to the people of Myanmar and to the Arakan region, Davutoğlu said, adding that the Turkish Red Crescent had come to help and will continue to contribute to the community, Anatolia news agency reported.

So far 3.4 million Turkish Liras have been collected in the Turkish Prime Ministry’s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate’s (AFAD) aid campaign.

Muslims living in the camp struggle with the accommodations and aren’t receiving adequate nutrition, Erdoğan said Turkish Red Crescent officials told her. “There are intolerable images here,” she said.

Myanmar invites OIC probe of sectarian unrest

Later, Davutoğlu and Erdoğan headed to the Buddhist camp and distributed the rest of the humanitarian aid there. On Aug. 9 Davutoğlu met with Myanmar opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw. On the issue of sectarian conflict in the country, Suu Kyi said she tries not to take sides, so neither of the groups will feel it is receiving unfair treatment.

Meanwhile, Myanmar has invited an influential Islamic body to visit a state rocked by sectarian violence, official media said on Aug. 10, in an effort to diffuse the mounting outcry over the treatment of the Muslim Rohingya, Agence France-Presse reported. In a rare conciliatory move, President Thein Sein said he welcomed a visit by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the world’s largest Muslim multinational group. “The president said he hoped the OIC secretary could witness the reality [in Rakhine],” state mouthpiece the New Light of Myanmar said. OIC head Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu on Aug. 5 proposed sending a mission to probe the “massacres... oppression and ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya in Rakhine.