HONG KONG  (SE): Myanmar’s state counsellor and de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, broke her silence over the massive Rohingya crisis in the northern state of Rahkine when she addressed matter in a nationally televised speech on September 18 CNN reported.
 
She said, “It is not the intention of the Myanmar government to apportion blame or to abdicate responsibility. We condemn all human rights violation and unlawful violence.” 
 

YANGON (UCAN): The upcoming visit of Pope Francis to the Union of Myanmar and Bangladesh has sparked fears and hopes in both countries.
 
In Yangon, the bishops of Myanmar fear that he will mention the injustices faced by the Rohingya people over attempts to drive them from the country, while leaders of the Islamic faith hope that he will, at least in his articulated prayer.
 

MANDALAY (UCAN): Pope Francis is to pay an impromptu visit to the Union of Myanmar. His intention is to focus his visit on the troubled Rankine state where for years some one million Muslim Rohingya people have suffered persecution and dispossession.
 
Invited by the president, Htin Kyaw, Pope Francis anticipates making his visit during the dry season in November. It will be the first visit of a pope to the country.
 

MANDALAY (UCAN): Naypyidaw has denied visas to three members of a United Nations (UN) fact finding mission charged with an investigation into human rights violations against the Muslim Rohingya minority people by security forces in the Union of Myanmar.
 
Bishop Alexander Pyone Cho, from of Pyay in the troubled Rakhine State, said that when he read the news it was hard for him to believe it.
 

NAYPYIDAW (UCAN): The commander-in-chief of the defence forces in the Union of Myanmar, a senior general, Min Aung Hlaing, termed Rohingya Muslims illegal immigrants and defended a bloody and vicious crackdown on the minority group in the northern part of Rakhine State.

The suppression resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,000 people and has put more than 77,000 people on the run.

KUALA LUMPUR (AsiaNews): The Malaysian government has become one of the first to introduce a skills training programme for the Rohingya people who have fled persecution in the Union of Myanmar and failed to find a welcome in Bangladesh or Thailand.

The programme is aimed at turning out semi-skilled workers that can be absorbed into the country’s labour market. It will also normalise their status in the country in order to give them the protection of labour legislation.

Mandalay (UCAN): A Buddhist group in Myanmar’s religiously divided Rakhine state in the Union of Myanmar has failed in its bid to pressure local authorities to expel Muslims from Sittwe.

Soe Naing, from the Rakhine National Network, a civil society organisation based in Sittwe, said that a petition with around 400 signatures was sent to the state’s chief minister in mid-May demanding that Muslims be expelled from the city’s Aung Mingalar quarter.

Mandalay (UCAN): The Muslim minority in Rakhine, Myanmar, identify as themselves as Rohingya, a term that the country’s new civilian government, just like the previous military regime, refuses to acknowledge.

The government instead insists on referring to the Rohingyas as Bengalis, implying that they are, instead, illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. This is despite the fact that the Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for decades.