•Aung San Suu Kyi faces first major crisis since becoming Myanmar’s de facto leader
By Emma Emeozor
She was two years old when her father, General Aung San, the independence hero of Myanmar was assassinated in July 1947, six months before the country attained independence. The graduate of Oxford University and mother of two had early exposure to international diplomacy, having lived with her mother, Daw Khin Kyi who was the country’s ambassador to India.
After 24 years stint in the United Kingdom where she got married to an academic, the late Michael Aris (who died of cancer in 1999), she returned to Yangon, the Myanmar capital after mother became critically ill.
That visit would mark a turning point in Aung San Suu Kyi’s life as it turned to a call to national service. She had arrived in Myanmar at a time when the clamour for reforms and democratic practice was sweeping across the country. Yangon was besieged by an army of demonstrators calling for ‘change.’
Her journey to fame
Coming from a family with a strong political background, she could not resist the urge to join the demonstration. “I could not as my father’s daughter remain indifferent to all that was going on,” she declared in a speech in Yangon on 26 August 1988.
From that day, she would become the arrowhead of the struggle against the dictatorship of the military who had ruled the country for 50 uninterrupted years (until it began a transition to democracy in 2011). Her activism earned her the wrath of the military government even as she became the ‘bride’ of the international community as she delivers anti-human rights speeches in major cities in Europe, Asia and the United States. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”.
Despite years of being under house arrest, her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) won the national elections for the second time in 2015. Today, Suu Kyi is the de-facto leader of Myanmar. She serves under the title of State counsellor as the constitution forbids her from being a president because she has children for a foreign person.
Credibility crisis
In her first parliamentary speech she reportedly cited the importance of protecting minority rights. Now, the plight of Myanmar’s minority group, the Rohingya, has made a section of the international community to question her credibility as a Nobel Laureate and human rights icon. Indeed, angry critics want her stripped of the title. Her world seems to be collapsing as she is accused of being silent on the bloody military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim community. Last week she was forced to skip the United States General Assembly summit to deal with the crisis. Interestingly, even in the face of the flood of criticisms, Al Jazeera reports that “at Yangon’s most popular bazaar, shoppers gently slide past one another beneath an array of dangling T-shirts emblazoned” with her image, “accompanied by the words “our leader.”
Who are the Rohingya
According to the United Nations, there are nearly 800,000 Rohingya living in Myanmar. The Rohingya are predominantly Muslims. The history of the Rohingya dates back to the 8th century. They came in contact with “Islam through Arab traders.” Media reports say they settled “in an independent kingdom in Arakan, now known as Rakhine state in modern-day Myanmar” The Arakan kingdom and Bengal (now Bangladesh) enjoyed robust diplomatic relations until the king of Burma, Bodawpaya invaded and conquered Arakan in 1784. As a result, “thousands of refugees fled to Bengal.” Today, Rohingya are reportedly living in the town of Cox’s Bazar in the Bay of Bengal in South Eastern Bangladesh. The town is named after the founder, Hiram Cox, a British diplomat who was charged with the responsibility of assisting refuges in 1790.
Following the capture of Burma (now Myanmar) by the British during World War II, Burma became a province in British India. The province was a business hub with “workers migrating there from other parts of British India for infrastructure projects.”
Burma would later change hands after Japan seized it from Britain in 1942. Burmese nationalists reportedly took advantage of the situation and attacked Muslim communities “believed to have benefited from British colonial rule.”Britain would however recapture Burma from the Japan with the support of the father of Aung San Suu Kyi (who was a nationalist) and Rohingya fighters. At the time, the Rohingya were confident that the British authorities would grant the Arakan kingdom political autonomy. But the British failed to grant their demand.
By 1948, “tensions increased between the government of the newly independent Burma and the Rohingya, many of whom wanted Arakan to join Muslim-majority Pakistan.
“The government retaliated by ostracizing the Rohingya, including removing Rohingya civil servants.” Two years later, a group of Rohingya “resisted the government, led by armed groups called Mujahids.” Though the insurgency “gradually” died down, renewed animosity between the Buddhist-led government and the Rohingya was ignited in 1962 after General Ne Win seized power “and took a hard line against the Rohingya.”
In 1977, Win’s government with the approval of his Burma Socialist Programme Party, started “Operation Naganin, or Dragon King, which they said was aimed at screening the population for foreigners. More than 200,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh, amid allegation of army abuse.”
Myanmar denies Rohingya citizenship
Though many Rohingya returned to Myanmar in 1978 following a United Nations-brokered deal canvassed by Bangladesh, they soon faced fresh attacks as the government introduced a new immigration law in 1982. The law redefined people who migrated during the British rule as illegal immigrants and the government applied it to all Rohingya. Seven years later, the military junta changed the name Burma to Myanmar.
While Bangladesh claims that the Rohingya are citizens of Myanmar, Yangon insists that they are not. The government has argued that the presence of the Rohingya in Myanmar does not date back to 1814, a requirement that needs to be met under the country’s citizenship laws.
Thus, the Rohingya are a stateless group within Myanmar. In 1991, over 250,000 Rohingya refugees reportedly fled “what they said was forced labour, rape and religious prosecution at the hands of the Myanmar army” even as the army claimed it was trying to restore order to Arakan (now Rakhine). About 230,000 Rohingya reportedly returned to Rakhine between 1992 and 1997 under another agreement. Even then, there had been no love lost between them and the Buddhist majority ethnic group.
Rather, in 2012, “rioting between Rohingya and Rakhine Buddhists killed more than 100 people, mostly Rohingya. Tens of thousands of people were driven into Bangladesh” and “nearly 150,000 were forced into camps in Rakhine.”
The ‘war’ between the Rohingya and the Buddhists nationalists was, again, renewed in 2016 when “Rohingya militant group Haraka al-Yaqin attacked border guard posts, killing nine soldiers.” The army was quick to retaliate and no fewer than 25,000 people fled to Bangladesh, alleging killing, rape and arson. At the time, Suu Kyi reportedly denied the atrocities.
The current crisis began with the rape and murder of a Rakhine Buddhist woman, allegedly by three Muslims. Within days of the incident, no fewer than 10 Muslims were killed. Angry Rohingya Muslims were said to have burned down hundreds of houses and killed seven people in the town of Maung Taw. It is estimated that about 300,000 Rohinga Muslims have fled to Bangladesh.
Suu Kyi’s dilemma
Since the current crisis started, anti-Myanmar government demonstrations have been organized by Muslims in Indonesia, Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand. China has also condemned the handling of the crisis. Pakistani demonstrators burnt effigies of Aung San Suu Kyi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during one of the demonstrations.
The international community is worried over the humanitarian catastrophe that is likely to happen except Yangon halt the crisis and find a lasting solution to it. Human rights groups want Yangon to recognize the Rohingya and grant them citizenship.
And here lies the dilemma of Suu Kyi. She is exercising limited authority in a power-sharing government. Till date, the military remain a powerful institution that she cannot undermine. Analysts say the military may not hesitate to undermine her government and kick her out should she act otherwise in the interest of the Rohingya Muslims.
Last week, the Rohingya rebels, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) issued a one month truce and called on the government to reciprocate in order to assist all victims of the crisis irrespective of their background. But Suu Kyi’s government rejected the offer, saying it does not negotiate with “terrorists.” “We have no policy to negotiate with terrorists,” Suu Kyi’s spokesman said on Twitter. The government has claimed that its security forces were carrying out clearance operations to defend against the rebels.
Beyond the activities of the Rohingya rebels, reports said the Rohingya are becoming radicalized. The International Crisis Group (ICG) reportedly said that the group of Rohingya Muslims that attacked Myanmar border guards in October 2016 had Islamic links. Media reports have quoted the Brussels-based ICG as saying that interviews with members of the Harakah al-Yah group had ties with Saudi Arabia and Parkistan.
According to the ICG, Rohingya who had fought in other countries, as well as some Pakistanis and Afghans gave clandestine training to Rakhine villagers over two years prior to the October 1216 attacks. Meanwhile, the Taliban, Islamic State and Al Qaeda are not only condemning Yangon but are calling for “a jihad against the authorities and the majority Buddhists.”
According to media reports, in a telephone conversation with the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Suu Kyi had blamed ‘terrorists’ for “a huge iceberg of misinformation calculated to create a lot of problems between different countries.”Erdogan had accused her government of “genocide” against the Rohingya.
The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has reportedly warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing and regional destabilization, expressing fears that the violence could spiral into a humanitarian catastrophe. So, Suu Kyi seems to be dangling between the demand of the international community and the interest of the Myanmar military.
This, no doubt is a difficult situation for a woman who rose to power through the moral and financial support of the international community.
The Kofi Annan report
As it is now, the Myanmar government has no option than to consider and implement the recommendations of the Advisory Commission appointed under the leadership of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, to find solutions to the ethnic conflict in the country. The 63-page report observed that the “Rakhine Muslim community, the Rohingya, had become vulnerable to human rights abuses due to a protracted conflict, statelessness and discrimination.”
Agency sources said the report also pointed out that about 10 percent of the world’s stateless people live in Myanmar and that Rohingya make up the single largest stateless community in the world.