"I am not a human rights activist. I am a politician. And as a politician, I have to take into account the interests of the whole country."

"more than 50 percent of Muslim villages are intact."

"terrorists... a huge iceberg of misinformation... calculated to create a lot of problems between different communities and with the aim of promoting the interest of the terrorists."

"I don't think there's any single answer to why people are leaving."

"Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it."