New US Ambassador Scot Marciel has met with former parliamentary speaker Thura U Shwe Mann to discuss the vexed question of Myanmar’s stateless Rohingya population, two weeks after an official statement on the issue prompted a loud protest outside the US Embassy.
Fresh from his first major policy speech on Tuesday, which outlined the future of US-Myanmar cooperation, Ambassador Marciel met with Shwe Mann in Nay Pyi Taw on Wednesday.
In an account of the meeting posted on Shwe Mann’s Facebook page, the former chair of the Union Solidarity and Development Party said he had made clear that the ambassador should not use a word that was “unacceptable” to the people of Myanmar, in reference to the Rohingya community’s preferred means of self-identifying.
In response, Marciel said that he had not sought to disregard the opinion of the people of Myanmar by using the word Rohingya, and that his actions as ambassador were determined by US government policy, according to the post. (Courtesy of Frontier Myanmar)
No comments:
Post a Comment