{"id":882,"date":"2017-09-16T11:21:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-16T11:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/?p=882"},"modified":"2017-09-16T11:21:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-16T11:21:50","slug":"why-aung-san-suu-kyi-isnt-protecting-the-rohingya-in-burma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/why-aung-san-suu-kyi-isnt-protecting-the-rohingya-in-burma\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Aung San Suu Kyi isn\u2019t protecting the Rohingya in Burma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What prompted her to cast aside her moral authority?<\/h2>\n
\u00a0https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/why-aung-san-suu-kyi-isnt-protecting-the-rohingya-in-burma\/2017\/09\/15\/c88b10fa-9900-11e7-87fc-c3f7ee4035c9_story.html?utm_term=.a18f8fae58b1<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nThis can no longer be said to be the face of a humanitarian hero. (Aung Shine Oo\/AP)<\/span><\/div>\n
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Burma is essentially run by one of the world\u2019s most lauded humanitarians \u2014 a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a democracy icon. Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the party in charge of the government, suffered more than two decades of repression, including a long house arrest, rather than leave the country or abandon her quest for elections.<\/p>\n

Yet since her party took power last year, Suu Kyi \u2014 the country\u2019s de facto leader, though not its official president \u2014 has stood by and watched the slaughter and flight of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya, a Muslim minority more than a million strong. In 2016, Burma\u2019s military was engaged in a campaign of brutal suppression in Rakhine state, in the west of the country. Then, scattered attacks by Rohingya militant groups on police posts prompted an even harsher counterattack from the generals, reportedly joined by vigilante groups and other state security forces. That cycle intensified further this summer.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other monitors have\u00a0cited<\/a>expulsions of Rohingya from towns, campaigns to burn whole villages and\u00a0killings\u00a0<\/a>by the armed forces in Burma (which is also called Myanmar) . In recent weeks alone, some 370,000 Rohingya have\u00a0fled<\/a>\u00a0into Bangladesh, according to United Nations estimates. The U.N. rights chief\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0the campaign in Rakhine a \u201ctextbook example of ethnic cleansing.\u201d NPR\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201creports of unbridled murder and arson, rape and persecution have followed [Rohingya] out of Myanmar\u2019s western state of Rakhine, sketching a stark portrait of government violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party was also repressed and brutalized by the armed forces during the long era of military rule, refuses to look squarely at the crisis. She has yet to visit the center of the violence, and in her public comments, she has refrained from criticizing the armed forces. This month, she\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0that there was an \u201ciceberg of misinformation\u201d circulating about the situation in Rakhine . Her office has\u00a0mocked<\/a>\u00a0supposed \u201cfake news\u201d about the plight of the Rohingya. And her spokesman\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0local news outlet Frontier Myanmar that Rohingya \u201care holding weapons \u2014 swords, daggers, catapults and home-made rifles\u201d \u2014 and then seemed to give non-Rohingya carte blanche to shoot Rohingya if they perceived danger from them.<\/p>\n

Why did somebody who achieved so much good become complicit in so much ugliness? There are several possible, interlocking reasons.<\/p>\n

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Why has Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and Burma’s de facto civilian leader, been so unwilling to condemn the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in her country?<\/span>\u00a0(The Washington Post)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

First, Suu Kyi\u2019s current silence is consistent with her approach to the Rohingya for years: She has never demonstrated much sympathy. On the campaign trail before the November 2015 election, she\u00a0strove<\/a>\u00a0to avoid discussing violence in Rakhine , even though an earlier wave had destroyed Rohingya communities and no militant group had yet emerged there. When she did speak about the Rohingya, she called reporters into a news conference shortly before the\u00a0vote<\/a>and told them not to \u201cexaggerate\u201d the difficulties that the Rohingya faced.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that this disinterest reflects Suu Kyi\u2019s personal views, but it\u2019s impossible to know for sure. One of her best-known biographers, Peter Popham,\u00a0has written<\/a>\u00a0that Suu Kyi is not, at her core, a bigot: She has had senior advisers who are Muslims (although not Rohingya). And \u201cone of the key figures in persuading her to dive into the democracy movement\u201d was a best-selling dissident Muslim author, Maung Thaw Ka, Popham notes.<\/p>\n

But Suu Kyi does represent her party. And there was little concern among the NLD rank and file in 2015, or even now in 2017, about violence against the Rohingya. Many NLD members, like a significant share of the Buddhist majority, simply think that the Rohingya are outsiders \u2014 called \u201cBengalis\u201d by many Burmese \u2014 who do not deserve to live in the country, even though some have been there for generations. Last year, Suu Kyi reportedly\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0the U.S. ambassador in Burma not to refer to the group as Rohingya, a sign that she sees them this way, too.<\/p>\n

That means there is no political benefit to challenging majority views toward the Rohingya. The NLD\u00a0did not put up any Muslim candidates<\/a>\u00a0during the 2015 national elections. Other former pro-democracy leaders, who also were harshly repressed by the military during the decades of junta rule, have\u00a0expressed<\/a>\u00a0far stronger anti-Rohingya sentiments than Suu Kyi ever has.<\/p>\n

These sentiments coincide with a growing Buddhist nationalist movement. As a recent International Crisis Group investigation\u00a0revealed<\/a>, this political and social movement is building extensive services at the community level. Buddhist nationalist groups offer what the ICG calls \u201ca sense of belonging\u201d for many young Buddhists. Such groups are the type of grass-roots organizations that no politician likes to alienate. Suu Kyi does not depend on the movement\u2019s support \u2014 many hard-line Buddhist nationalists view her as soft on the Rohingya \u2014 but she also probably does not want a major rift with it.<\/p>\n

Since taking control of the government \u2014 at least, the ministries not controlled by the military \u2014 Suu Kyi has made clear that she has two major\u00a0priorities<\/a>: trying to improve Burma\u2019s economy and, most important to the government, making peace with the ethnic armies that have waged long insurgencies in northern and northeastern parts of the country.<\/p>\n

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Suu Kyi has launched an ambitious peace process with a number of insurgent groups, clearly seeing it as essential to her legacy and to making the country whole. Her father, the independence leader Aung San, tried to lay the groundwork for a federal Burma and prevent this civil conflict, but he was assassinated not long after he came to an initial agreement with ethnic minority groups. So all other issues are second to the economy and the peace process, as a government spokesman\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the New York Times, playing down the relative importance of \u201cdemocracy and human rights, including press freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suu Kyi may also believe that her ability to stop the brutal military campaign in Rakhine state is limited. Although she is the de facto head of government, the top general, Min Aung Hlaing, maintains a great degree of power. Burma\u2019s constitution gives the armed forces control over the military budget and over ministries related to security issues; they are also allotted 25 percent of seats in parliament. Perhaps the army will have less power at some point in the future, after a period of civilian rule and a change in the constitution to reduce its role in politics. But until then, Suu Kyi may judge it impractical to waste political capital challenging the military on an issue many people in her party do not care about.<\/p>\n

Another problem is that foreign pressure on her to stop the Rohingya crisis seems to have made her even more intransigent. Suu Kyi has always been known as stubborn. (How else does one survive decades under house arrest and other repression?) She also is known to keep her own counsel. She does not have many voices in her inner circle pushing back or offering critiques of her actions \u2014 voices that could argue for a change in her Rakhine policy. She has a small staff and reportedly\u00a0gets<\/a>\u00a0little input from NLD members of parliament. Fergal Keane, a longtime chronicler of Suu Kyi for the BBC,\u00a0noted<\/a>that \u201clast December, when Vijay Nambiar, the UN Special Representative to Myanmar, urged Aung San Suu Kyi to visit Rakhine state, he was rebuffed.\u201d Why? Because, as one Suu Kyi adviser told Keane, she simply did not want to be seen as following outside orders. This stubbornness could be multiplied by a feeling of betrayal: The very countries, rights organizations and international leaders who for decades supported Suu Kyi are now inveighing against her.<\/p>\n

Suu Kyi has not been totally inactive on the Rakhine crisis. She created a commission of experts, chaired by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, to investigate the violence. This was an important step, and her government has rhetorically committed to implementing the panel\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Suu Kyi may see that, despite criticism of how she has handled the Rakhine crisis, most powerful foreign governments are not going to punish Burma. The White House put out a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0this past week noting that it was \u201cdeeply troubled\u201d by the violence in Rakhine but has done little else. Elsewhere, Delhi has stood alongside Suu Kyi in condemning Rohingya terrorist groups and has\u00a0threatened<\/a>\u00a0to deport Rohingya seeking shelter in India. Beijing\u00a0blames<\/a>\u00a0the Rohingya militants for the violence. This month, Suu Kyi\u2019s security adviser\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cfriendly countries\u201d such as China would block any resolution at the U.N. Security Council criticizing Burma.<\/p>\n

Given her moral stature, her history and her power in Burma, Suu Kyi\u2019s inaction has surely worsened affairs. She has shown the military that it can act with impunity, and her public statements have done nothing to challenge people within her party who don\u2019t see the issue as important. Her indifference has hurt aid organizations\u2019 ability to get people on the ground and to potentially raise money to help the Rohingya.<\/p>\n

Suu Kyi can still make a difference, though. By speaking out more about the plight of the Rohingya, she could boost international aid efforts to keep Rohingya in camps in Bangladesh \u2014 and temporary places of shelter inside Burma \u2014 from dying. And in the end, she is the popularly elected leader in Burma; while Buddhist nationalist groups and generals might dislike a visit by her to Rakhine , they would be unlikely to stop her.<\/p>\n

She knows these things. But she has watched the humanitarian crisis unfold anyway.<\/p>\n

Twitter: @JoshKurlantzick<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What prompted her to cast aside her moral authority? \u00a0https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/why-aung-san-suu-kyi-isnt-protecting-the-rohingya-in-burma\/2017\/09\/15\/c88b10fa-9900-11e7-87fc-c3f7ee4035c9_story.html?utm_term=.a18f8fae58b1 This can no longer be said to be the face of a humanitarian hero. (Aung Shine Oo\/AP) Burma is essentially run by one of the world\u2019s most lauded humanitarians \u2014 a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a democracy icon. Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13826,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13826"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}