Obama Warns Myanmar's Celebrated Reforms Backsliding

The United States voiced alarm over Myanmar's "backsliding" on democratic reforms, as President Barack Obama Thursday attended a regional summit meant to showcase the country's transition from army-led isolation.

Obama was set to raise powder-keg rights issues in a meeting with his Myanmar counterpart Thein Sein -- a former general turned reformer -- late Thursday on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw.

Obama set the tone for his meeting with hard-hitting comments on the pace of reforms in an interview with Myanmar news website The Irrawaddy published just before he arrived on Wednesday night for a three-day trip.

"One of the main messages that I’ll deliver on this visit is that the government of Myanmar has a responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of all people in the country, and that the fundamental human rights and freedoms of all people should be respected," Obama said.

"Even as there has been some progress on the political and economic fronts, in other areas there has been a slowdown and backsliding in reforms.

"In addition to restrictions on freedom of the press, we continue to see violations of basic human rights and abuses in the country’s ethnic areas, including reports of extrajudicial killings, rape and forced labor."

Obama planned to speak out on behalf of the nation's Muslim Rohingya minority in "all of his engagements" in Myanmar, his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, told reporters on Thursday.

The U.S. will call for Myanmar to allow stateless Rohingya Muslims to become citizens, after Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about the marginalized group.

He will call on the former pariah state to ensure the "fundamental universal rights" of all those in the nation, Rhodes said.

The situation in Rakhine state, where some 140,000 people are confined to squalid displacement camps after bloodshed between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012, "presents a challenge to the reform efforts" across the country, said deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes.

A draft of a controversial government-backed Rakhine Action Plan seen by AFP would force Rohingya to identify themselves as Bengali -- a term seen as disparaging -- in order to apply for citizenship. Those who refused would be housed in camps.

Rhodes said the U.S. President will encourage all Myanmar figureheads, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, to support an alternative plan for the Rohingya that "allows them to become citizens of this country without having to self-identify as something they do not believe they are".

The plan should also provide more humanitarian access and ensure they are not "settled indefinitely in camps".

In an interview with the Irrawaddy news website ahead of his arrival in Myanmar, Obama said he was "deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in Rakhine", adding the Rohingya and other Muslims "continue to endure discrimination and abuse".

Rakhine remains a tinderbox of animosity, with the different religious communities almost completely segregated after the fighting.

Muslims in the camps have been left with scant access to healthcare, public services and education.

Obama's use of the term "Rohingya" is laden with political meaning.

Many in Myanmar's government and local Buddhists view them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

But many Rohingya say they can trace their ancestry in the country back for generations.

Rakhine authorities on Thursday issued a rebuke to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for his insistence that the United Nations would use the term Rohingya as part of its principle to "recognize the rights of minorities" at a press conference in Naypyidaw on Wednesday.

Rakhine State Chief Minister Maung Maung Ohn said he was concerned that Ban's comments "could further inflame local sentiment and undo previous gains we have achieved", in a document released by the ministry of information.

Some 100,000 people have taken to boats, many barely sea-worthy, to escape the dire conditions in Rakhine, where both Buddhist and Muslim communities have long suffered Myanmar's worst poverty levels.

Around 140,000 Rohingya languish in fetid displacement camps in western Rakhine State after religious violence flared two years ago, leaving scores of the minority dead and casting a dark cloud over the nation's pathway towards democracy.

Suu Kyi had preceded Obama's trip with her own warning against "over-optimism" about democracy in Myanmar, as the nation heads for crucial general elections next year.

She is campaigning to change the junta-era constitution, which currently bars her from the presidency -- even if her party is successful in the polls -- and earmarks a quarter of the legislature for unelected soldiers.

A debate on the constitutional change began in parliament on Thursday.

Obama has framed Myanmar's reform process, which began in 2011 when Thein Sein took the helm of a quasi-civilian government, as an example of the positive effects of Washington's engagement.

His administration has in recent years made a major foreign policy "pivot" towards Asia and -- until now -- Myanmar's baby-steps towards democracy have been trumpeted as a success for that strategy.

Myanmar saw the removal of most Western sanctions as it released the majority of political prisoners and loosened draconian press censorship, allowing a flurry of investor interest in the country seen as an exciting untapped market.

But the country, which was stifled under military rule for almost half a century, has faced increasingly frequent accusations that its ambitious transition is stuttering.

Activists have sounded the alarm over prosecutions of protesters and journalists, while one reporter was shot and killed by the military last month in a volatile border area -- a killing referenced by the U.S. president in his Irrawaddy interview.

International concerns have overshadowed what Myanmar's government had hoped would be a celebration of the nation's democratic achievements at Naypyidaw this week as it welcomed its biggest gathering of world leaders since the reforms began.

Thein Sein hosted the heads of the other nine members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc for an annual summit on Wednesday.

ASEAN was then joined by Obama and leaders from Japan, China, India, Australia, China, Russia, South Korea and New Zealand for the East Asia summit on Thursday.

Obama is in the midst of a hectic Asia-Pacific tour that started in Beijing for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, during which he announced a surprise climate deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He will travel to Australia on Friday for the G20 summit.