Last month, Myanmar (aka Burma) took a very symbolic step along its long and garrisoned road towards democracy. That’s when members of its first democratically elected government took their seats in parliament.
Burma embarked upon a democratic era on Monday as a new parliament sat for the first time, with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi finally in a position to lead the country.
Nearly three months ago, street parties broke out in major cities as it became clear that her National League for Democracy (NLD) would win a majority of seats — 77% in the final count — in the Nov. 8 elections…
Suu Kyi has insisted she will simply select a President who will carry out her wishes, regardless of constitutional rules on the role of the head of state [which military rulers enacted to prevent her from serving as president].
(TIME, February 1, 2016)
The most notorious feature of Myanmar’s dictatorial era was the way military rulers kept Suu Kyi under house arrest … for 15 years. But the most brutal feature was the way Buddhists ethnically/religiously cleansed Muslims … with impunity.
Therefore, you’d be forgiven for thinking Suu Kyi’s NLD party would make ending this genocidal menace one of its top priorities. Not least because she won universal acclaim, and a Nobel Peace Prize to boot, for the personal sacrifices she made to champion democratic freedoms.
Clearly, the sacrifices she endured during her detention pale in comparison to the persecution, displacement, and murder Muslims have always suffered.
This is why the just released video of an interview she gave the BBC has “alarmed even her most dedicated fans.” It shows Buddhist Suu Kyi effectively condoning this ethnic/religious cleansing.
When she was repeatedly asked [by interviewer Mishal Husain] to condemn anti-Islamic sentiment and the wave of mob-led massacres of Muslims in Myanmar, she declined to do so. ‘I think there are many, many Buddhists who have also left the country for various reasons,’ she replied. ‘This is a result of our sufferings under a dictatorial regime.’
(Daily Mail, March 24, 2016)
For a little perspective, just imagine the visceral outrage if Afghanistan’s then president-in-waiting, the Sunni Hamid Karzai, had excused the religious cleansing of Shiites by citing the suffering both sects suffered under Taliban rule.
In truth, Suu Kyi seems perfectly prepared to lord over the ethnic/religious cleansing of Muslims just as military rulers did.
Nothing telegraphs this quite like a hot mic capturing her own indignant strain of bigotry as she muttered the following at the end of Husain’s interview:
No-one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim.
(Indian Express, March 26, 2016)
As it happens, TIME betrayed the saintly worship Suu Kyi usually commands when it reported – without any hint of criticism – that she leads her party in an “unapologetically autocratic manner.”
In fact, her self-regard and self-righteousness are such that her top legislative priority will probably be repealing those constitutional rules that prevent her from serving as president. This, while not even countenancing rules that would allow Muslims to enjoy the same democratic freedoms Buddhists do.
Apropos of this, the Daily Mail reported that Husain’s interview
revealed another side to Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi that sits at odds with her iconic image.
Except that it revealed nothing to me. Because I’m on record decrying her refusal to denounce this ethnic/religious cleansing long before Husain conducted that November 2013 interview. Here are excerpts from just a few of my commentaries on point.
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- From “Obama’s Historic Trip to Myanmar: Too Soon?” November 12, 2012:
Nothing demonstrates the extent to which she has been co-opted quite like Suu Kyi’s deafening silence about the ongoing religious cleansing of minority Muslims by majority Buddhists. Especially given that the UN has called Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims ‘the world’s most persecuted people.’
Yet, when challenged to explain her silence, the Buddhist Suu Kyi demurred, saying self-righteously that she was not taking sides to preserve her impartiality to help them reconcile. But just imagine how much worse the religious cleansing of minority Muslims by majority Hindus in India would have been if the Hindu Gandhi had not been so vocal in condemning it?
- From “Aung San Suu Kyi Becoming Democratic Mascot of Myanmar’s Military Dictatorship,” March 28, 2013:
I wonder what my critics have to say about the images of Suu Kyi that went viral yesterday. For they show her sitting quite comfortably, as a solitary female fixture, among hundreds of military men as they presided over the hallmark of all dictatorships, the annual military parade.
There can be no denying that these images provide clear vindication of my informed cynicism.
- From “Buddhists Religiously Cleansing Myanmar of Muslims,” May 13, 2015:
I continue to hope against hope that the klieg light of media coverage will finally shine on Myanmar’s unfolding genocide…
A little more media coverage of their plight would force Myanmar’s military rulers to act — if only to prevent damning media images of Muslims fleeing oppression from undermining promotional media images of foreigners visiting tourist sites.
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I trust these excerpts explain why the only thing I find alarming about this interview is that it’s only now making news – from India to America, especially given that the BBC published it on “24 October 2013.”
Remarkably, it took Peter Popham ‘revealing’ Suu Kyi’s hot-mic remark in his new book, The Lady And The Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi And Burma’s Struggle For Freedom (March 2016), for the media to begin sounding alarms about her anti-Muslim bias.
The only thing that explains this belated outrage is the deference virtually every major news organization once showed Suu Kyi. To its credit, the BBC broke ranks a few months ago when it began questioning her “saintly integrity” as follow:
There was a time when Aung San Suu Kyi was seen as Asia’s Nelson Mandela. To her more ardent fans, she was more than that: an icon, almost a saint. So why is the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s political party excluding Muslims from its list of candidates for November’s general election?
(BBC, September 8, 2015)
I felt compelled to answer the BBC – in “Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi Courting Totalitarian Power at the Expense of Democratic Principles,” September 14, 2015 – as follows.
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It’s arguable that Nelson Mandela of South Africa was the only political leader who commanded more universal admiration and respect over the past 50 years than Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar.
Of course, they seemed bonded by an uncompromising commitment to democratic principles, which they honored by spending 27 and 15 years as political prisoners, respectively.
Except that, after talking the talk, Mandela began walking the walk from the day he was finally released in 1990. By contrast, Suu Kyi seemed to be walking pursuant to a Faustian bargain with her military jailers from the day she was finally released in 2010…
Just imagine how disheartening it would’ve been if Mandela began preparing South Africa for its first democratic elections by presiding over the ethnic cleansing of Whites – not just from his African National Congress party, but from the entire country.
Alas, Western powers remain all too willing to indulge Suu Kyi’s betrayal of the democratic principles she once championed. Nothing demonstrates this quite like Washington denouncing Myanmar’s generals for executing a putsch within their ruling party, while uttering nary a word about Suu Kyi purging Muslims from her opposition party.
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Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s devoted apologists would have you believe that her anti-Muslim bias is only part of a carefully calibrated strategy to appease military rulers, which she deems necessary to advance the cause of democracy. Never mind that her indignant remark about being interviewed by a Muslim belies this.
Whatever the case, their reverence is such that they cannot see how this so-called strategy damns her saintly integrity. After all, Mahatma Gandhi would not have been as revered as he was if he had “affected” anti-Muslim bias to appease Hindu nationalists, which he might have deemed necessary to advance the cause of independence. In fact, Gandhi died a broken and disillusioned man in large part because his efforts to forge Hindu-Muslim unity failed so fiendishly.
Mind you, I understand all too well the inclination to hail Suu Kyi as more saint than politician. However, where the treatment of Muslims is concerned, she has already shown that she does not have the sensibilities of the political Indira, let alone that of the saintly Mahatma.
This constrains me to note that, throughout history, women have shown that they can be every bit as power hungry, ruthless, and bloodthirsty as men. Rulers like Empress Wu Zetian, (Bloody) Queen Mary I, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher bear this out.
Accordingly, I fear Suu Kyi will show no greater regard for Muslims in Myanmar in 2016 than Mary I showed for Protestants in England in 1553.
Related commentaries:
Suu Kyi…