Majalla - London
Aung San Suu Kyi is a Myanmar politician and 1991 Nobel laureate for Peace, who was severely criticised for her initial silence, then support of the government’s crackdown against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar. She held the office of the State Chancellor of Myanmar (which is equivalent to a prime minister) since 2016 till February 2021, when the military took over power and arrested her over claims of fraudulent results of the general elections.
Aung San Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945 in Burma. Her father Aung San was a politician and opposition leader who was assassinated by his rivals. Her mother was a diplomat who held several roles in the Burmese government after independence from the United Kingdom. Aung San Suu Kyi pursued her early studies in Burma, then in India. Later, she attended Oxford University, where she met the British scholar Michael Aris, to whom she got married. She proceeded with her post-graduate studies and her family life.
In 1988, leaving her family abroad, she returned home and participated in the opposition movement against the military rule, and co-founded The National League for Democracy (NLD). In 1989, the military government of newly founded Union of Myanmar put Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in Yangon.
In 1991, while still under house confinement, she was awarded Nobel Price for Peace, which her sons accepted in her behalf. However, she stated that her resort to non-violence was a political tactic, as she said later, "I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons.”
She was set free in July 1995, then arrested again in early 2000s. Her continued detention was met with protests and calls for release while the international community labelled it illegal in 2009. In 2010, in solidarity with her, after a new law was passed to ban any candidate whose spouse or children are foreigners from running for office, the NLD didn’t participate in the general elections against the military which won easily without major opposition. After that, she was released promising to keep her opposition to the junta.
Restrictions on her political life were loosened, as she was able to travel outside Yangon and met with politicians of her country and other high-profile figures. In 2012, the government approved her election bid and she easily won.
Since then, Suu Kyi has kept a high international profile, while she advocated more political freedoms in Myanmar. Though some progress was achieved, her efforts stopped short of changing the constitutional rule that bans her from becoming President.
In 2016, the NLD secured a parliament majority that allow it to form the government. Hence, she decided to rule from a back seat, selecting her confidant to be president. Few weeks later, she was assigned a new post, the State Chancellor, that was introduced by a legislation bill and signed into by the president.
Since appointed as State Chancellor, her tenure is mostly marred by the treatment of Muslim Rohingya minority of Rakhine state.
Her government refused to recognise the Rohingya people as an official ethnic group in Myanmar, so Rohingya cannot apply for citizenship and few laws exist to protect their rights. Suu Kyi even once asked the US ambassador not to use the term “Rohingya” as her government doesn’t acknowledge this Muslim population, who has lived in Myanmar for generations, among its 135 official ethnic minorities.
In 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh due to military crackdown sparked by deadly attacks on police stations in Rakhine state.
The crackdown resulted in civilian casualties, arbitrary beatings and detentions of ethnic Rakhines, forced seizures of property, and blockage of food aid and medical relief.
In 2017, she refused the Arakan Liberation Party’s several proposals to hold a national political dialogue, which was a mandatory step of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA).
She was called upon by former international supporters and other public figures such as the Dalai Lama and Malala Yousefzai to intervene and end the plight of the Rohingya, but she did nothing to stop the rape, murder and possible genocide. Moreover, she defended the army actions and refused to acknowledge accounts of atrocities at the International Court of Justice in Hague, which was a turning point for her world reputation that some Human-rights advocates launched a petition to revoke her Nobel Prize, and accused her of “legitimising genocide.”
As the world watched the horrific expulsion and mass murder of the Rohingya people, Aung San Suu Kyi defended the army that kept her under house arrest for about 15 years, describing generals in her cabinet as "rather sweet”. Three years on, she sits under house arrest once again.
Currently, most international reactions to the military coup which ousted Aung San Suu Kyi came in her favor, as western countries call for the reinstatement of her government.
