Beauty queen says she was dethroned 'over Rohingya video'

This article is more than 12 months old

Oct 05, 2017 06:00 am

YANGON: A Myanmar beauty queen said she was stripped of her title after posting a video accusing Muslim Rohingya militants of driving communal violence in Rakhine State, a conflict fraught with controversy in the mainly Buddhist country.

In a video posted on her Facebook last week, Miss Grand Myanmar Shwe Eain Si accused the Rohingya militants of leading a "media campaign" to trick the world into thinking "they are the oppressed".

Shots of her speaking to the camera are interspersed with images of people with bloody gashes across their faces, nude babies and screen shots from videos posted by the militant group known as Arsa (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army).

On Sunday, the firm behind the pageant announced that the 19-year-old had been stripped of her title for breaching contract rules, but the statement did not mention the video.

In a reply posted on Facebook Tuesday, Shwe Eain Si said these accusations were “groundless” and linked the move to her comments on the Rohingya.

One of the company’s complaints, the beauty queen wrote, was that she “failed to project a decent image of a pageant contestant”.

“Yes, Shwe Eain Si made a video about the reign of terror brought about by the ARSA militants in Rakhine State, but that was hardly qualified as a failure to project a decent image of a pageant contestant,” her post said.