State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has conducted a rare exclusive interview with Japanese media outlet NHK, in which she spoke of the government’s response to the crisis in Rakhine. The interview, which was broadcast on June 8 also covered the recent MoU signed between Myanmar and two UN agencies, and the role Japanese businesses can play in Myanmar’s economic growth. Regarding the crisis in Rakhine State, Aung San Suu Kyi urged people to recognize that it is “a long standing issue”. “People forget that it goes back a couple of centuries. It’s not something that happened yesterday,” she said, adding that her administration had only been in power for two years. Delays in the repatriation agreement, she blamed on a lack of trust between Myanmar and Bangladeshi authorities, and said trust building must be a “two-way street”. She also dismissed the notion that the two Reuters journalists arrested in December were detained for their coverage of the issues in Rakhine State. “They were arrested because they broke the Official Secret Act,” she said.