BANGKOK — For the first time since Myanmar’s military unleashed violence against Rohingya Muslims in August, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate who heads the civilian government, on Thursday visited the state where the atrocities have been taking place.

The United Nations and international rights groups have laid out evidence of an ethnic cleansing campaign across the northern part of the state, Rakhine. They say that hundreds, at least, have been killed, and that the majority of the Rohingya population has been driven into neighboring Bangladesh by the military’s use of arson, execution and rape.

The Myanmar government, however, says it is fighting Rohingya Muslim “terrorists” who launched attacks on security outposts, killing at least a dozen people. Members of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s cabinet maintain that not a single Rohingya has been killed by the Myanmar military.

There is little overlap between the international and domestic narratives.

One of the places Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi visited during her day trip to northern Rakhine was Taung Pyo, on the border with Bangladesh. The rice-growing hamlet serves as a case study in how perceptions of the violence in Rakhine have diverged.