Arakan News Agency
China supports Myanmar in “protecting its peace and stability” and will not join countries condemning what it sees as an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya Muslims, a ruling Communist Party official said.
This came in remarks made by the Vice Minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Guo Yezhou, at a press conference held Saturday in Beijing, quoted by the Associated Press.
Beijing has long had close ties with Myanmar military leaders who have been leading the country for decades.
He also praised what he described as the “friendly relations between the communists in China and the political parties in Myanmar” on the southern border of his country.
“These relations are based on the principle of non-interference,” he said, adding that his country was confident that the Myanmar government and people “can handle” the situation without any outside help.
Since August 25, the Myanmar army and Buddhist militias have committed crimes, attacks and massacres against the Muslim minority of Rohingya in Arakan province, killing thousands of them, local activists said.
According to the latest International Organization for Migration (IOM) survey, 589,000 Rohingyas have been taken to Bangladesh.
The government of Myanmar considers Rohingya Muslims as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh, while the United Nations classifies them as “the most persecuted religious minority in the world”
