History is littered with public figures who betrayed the public trust. But no betrayal has been more shocking and disillusioning than Aung San Suu Kyi’s complicity in genocide against the Rohingya.
I have vented my own shock and disillusionment in such commentaries as “Aung San Suu Kyi Becoming Democratic Mascot of Myanmar’s Military Dictatorship,” March 28, 2013, “Buddhists Religiously Cleansing Muslims in Myanmar,” May 13, 2015, and “Nobel Peace Laureate Suu Kyi Courting Military Power at the Expense of Democratic Principles,” September 14, 2015.
The last of these includes this instructive juxtaposition between of the way Nelson Mandela lived up to his Nobel acclaim and the way Suu Kyi is making a mockery of hers.
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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 (a.k.a. Burma).
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.
I decried the conspiracy of silence in the Western media as Suu Kyi and her military cohorts sat by as Buddhist monks began religiously cleansing Myanmar of Muslims. … I am so heartened that the BBC is finally beginning to echo the questions I raised years ago about Suu Kyi’s commitment to democratic principles. …
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.
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This is why I was heartened when Suu Kyi’s fellow Nobel laureates began condemning her. I duly hailed them in “Even Fellow Nobel Laureates Now Condemning Suu Kyi, the Godmother of Ethnic Cleansing,” September 14, 2017, noting on point that:
It’s an indication of how much goodwill Suu Kyi has lost that calls to rescind her 1991 peace prize have gone viral. Unfortunately, the Nobel Committee is on record declaring that it has no process or precedent for rescinding prizes.
But I remained mindful that no amount of pubic condemnation or stripping of prizes would constitute just punishment for her complicity in genocide. This is why I am even more heartened by this all too belated development:
Myanmar’s military has been accused of genocide against the Rohingya in Rakhine state in a damning UN report. …
They found that the military were ‘killing indiscriminately, gang-raping women, assaulting children and burning entire villages’ in Rakhine, home to the Muslim Rohingya, and in Shan and Kachin. …
The UN report criticised Aung San Suu Kyi’s passive role over the past year. ‘[She] has not used her de facto position as head of government, nor her moral authority, to stem or prevent the unfolding events in Rakhine state,’ it said.
(The Guardian US, August 27, 2018)
Her disheartened critics continually bemoan how Suu Kyi has fallen from grace. But this spares her the punishment she deserves. Instead, they should be calling on the International Criminal Court to charge her with conspiracy in this genocide. At the very least, the UN should target her along with the military generals in sanctions on Myanmar that make those it imposed on rogue states like North Korea seem benign.
Yet, past being prologue, I fear it’s only a matter of time before the UN publishes an equally damning report on another genocide, which the world stood by and allowed to unfold. Apropos of this, here is how I dismissed the haunting regret of past leaders of the free world, as well as the preening disinterest of the current one, in “South Sudan: Another Genocide Developing in Africa,” December 19, 2016.
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Former President Bill Clinton expressed haunting regret for doing nothing as years of ethnic cleansing developed into ‘all-out ethnic civil war’ in Rwanda on his watch.
President Obama expressed similar regret on Friday: not only for doing nothing as years of sectarian strife developed into all-out religious civil war in Syria, but also for doing nothing as years of ethnic cleansing developed to the brink of all-out ethnic civil war in South Sudan. But at least Obama draws the appropriate moral equivalence between these two humanitarian catastrophes.
After all, far too many of those damning him for failing to intervene in Syria have never damned him for failing to intervene in South Sudan … or anywhere else in Africa beset by similar humanitarian catastrophes.
That said, I’m all too mindful that regrets never saved anyone. But, given that President Trump seems congenitally incapable of such feelings, he is unlikely to ever express any if/when civil war degenerates into genocide in South Sudan … or anywhere else.
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Alas, the entire world reacts to Trump’s daily tweets as if they were greater crimes against humanity than the mass murder, rape, and pillaging the UN documented in its Rohingya report.
Meanwhile, with each unfolding genocide, the post-Holocaust clarion call of “never again” rings more hollow. But still I cry, freedom!
Related commentaries:
Holocaust museum rescinds prize…
South Sudan…