Pope Francis called for respect for rights and justice in a keenly-watched address in Myanmar on Tuesday, but refrained from any mention of the Rohingya or the alleged ethnic cleansing that has driven huge numbers of the Muslim minority from the country.
Sharing a stage with Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the capital Naypyidaw, he did not address the Rohingya crisis head-on but instead tip-toed around the unfolding humanitarian emergency.
Peace can only be achieved through “justice and a respect for human rights”, he said in a broadly-framed speech that also called for “respect for each ethnic group and its identity”.
The word “Rohingya”, an incendiary term in a mainly Buddhist country where the Muslim minority are denied citizenship and branded illegal “Bengali” immigrants, was entirely absent from his speech.
Francis has repeatedly defended the group, some 620,000 of whom have fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August.
Rights groups had urged him to tackle Myanmar about its treatment of the minority during his four-day visit, but the local Catholic Church had cautioned him against straying into the Rohingya issue.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been ostracised by a global rights community that once adored her but is now outraged at her tepid response to the plight of the Rohingya.
She spoke of the challenges her country faces as it creeps out of the shadow of five decades of military rule, but also did not reference the Rohingya.
The government aimed to build the nation by “protecting rights, fostering tolerance, ensuring security for all”, she said in a short speech, that gave a nod to global concern over the “situation in the Rakhine.”
The pope’s peace mission is studded with pitfalls in Myanmar, where a monk-led Buddhist nationalist movement has fostered widespread loathing for the Rohingya.
In recognition of those tensions his public speech was “very carefully worded”, Myanmar-based political analyst Richard Horsey told AFP, speculating “he is likely to have been more forthright in private meetings with Myanmar’s leaders.”
But the pontiff’s words were of little comfort to Rohingya stuck in dire conditions in Bangladesh.
“We are very much disappointed that he did not mention the Rohingya crisis,” said Rohingya activist Mohammad Zubair from Kutupalong refugee camp, speaking of a religious leader who previously “even held prayers for the Rohingya”.