Grotesqueness of Aung San Suu Kyi
By Abdul-Majeed Azad
Cleveland, Ohio
For most people Buddhism is all about tolerance and peace. So, when the Buddhist monk Dalai Lama speaks against injustice and oppression, people listen with respect.
But this icon of peace hasn’t uttered any word of wisdom or compassion about what has been happening to the Rohingya community in the Rakhine province both under the brutal siege of Burmese military until recently and now under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi .
Rohingyas are migrants of Bangladeshi descent who have called Myanmar their home, for decades. They are subject of systemic attacks, abuse and arbitrary arrests by the Burmese security forces.
Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize quarter-of-a-century ago in 1991 while she was under house arrest since 1989. In its glorious citation, the Nobel committee had praised her for ‘non-violent struggle for democracy and human right’ and ‘the desired conciliation between the sharply divided regions and ethnic groups in here country’.
If any one of the Nobel Peace prize committee members is alive today, he/she would be chewing on the committee’s words, knowing well that the once-admired peace activist in Burma has now become an insensitive and creepy abettor of crimes against humanity in her own country.
In elections held last year, she swept to power by populist votes and became the de facto democratic leader of Myanmar. A remarkable journey for a woman in one of the most oppressive regimes in the world! Being married to a British citizen, she was constitutionally barred from Myanmar’s presidency. Nevertheless, she holds the post of foreign minister and an especially created title of state counselor.
The same Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who suffered unspeakable miseries at the hands of her own people for two decades, has now opted to remain quiet on this thorny issue, all along her journey for a political comeback. She also declined to offer support for Rohingyas. When asked whether they should be regarded as Burmese citizens, her coy answer was: ‘I do not know’.
As every savvy politician, she was right; she couldn’t take a political risk by defending the rights of oppressed minorities. In response to the concerns raised by UN, a Myanmar representative blatantly said, ‘There is no such group as Rohingya in Myanmar’.
Few years ago, the worldwide coverage of the brutal attacks by the Burmese army on the Buddhist monks was almost instantaneous. But there is not as much as a faint beep from any quarter against the cruelty of Buddhist villagers and security forces on Rohingyas in Myanmar. Eyewitness accounts of international reporters describe the living condition of Rohingyas much worse than Rakhine Buddhists whose camps had smart tents, working sanitation and a regular delivery of food and medical supplies.
Her silence as well as the hubristic ignorance towards the plight of Myanmar’s oppressed Muslim minority ethnic Rohingya, during her freed years and political climb up until now, has exposed the real ‘Aung San Suu Kyi’ to the world. Her continued silence on this subject has vexed advocates of human rights all over the world. It has threatened her credibility as a true leader of a free democratic country. Her humanistic legacy, once recognized and appreciated by the United Nations and Nobel Foundation for Peace, is now questionable.
To make its intentions clear, her government recently requested the US ambassador to Myanmar to not even use the term ‘Rohingya’, but to call them simply ‘Bengalis’ - the decendents of Bangladeshi migrants who have lived in Rakhine province for several decades. Ironically, a person who herself was persecuted by the ruthless Army junta and denied minimum human decency for decades, has now become an heir-apparent of persecution of minorities in her country. What is more pathetic is that someone whose name has been synonymous with human rights for the past twenty-five years, and who has exhibited unflinching courage and unwavering defiance in the face of isolation and ostracism, has now succumbed to the utterly unacceptable policy of the very military junta she managed to defeat.
She has been a central player in causing Myanmar’s reacceptance into the world community after decades of isolation – something she wouldn’t want to disappear because of her recently acquired political hegemony. Already there are calls by human rights groups in the United States for President Obama to renew sanctions against the country before they expire on May 20. Therefore, it would serve her well if Aung San Suu Kyi would wisely reconsider her stance on the subject of Rohingyas.
Sure there is no oil in Rakhine to warrant any meaningful reaction by the United States, but the American silence on this human tragedy raises serious questions about our inherent commitment to guard and save the oppressed people everywhere on this planet. That we would not stand by in silence and watch Aung San Suu Kyi morph into a dictator, should be made very clear to her.
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