Darren’s Dossier: The Rise and Fall of Aung San Suu Kyi
by Darren Mikus
When I was a child, I would immerse myself for hours in books about war and revolution. I became familiar with the old heros of justice: Vaclav Havel who fought communism in Czechoslovakia, the students who stood up to tanks in Tiananmen Square and most importantly, Nelson Mandela, who freed his country from racial oppression without firing a single bullet. He was a hero to so many and I still think back on what he did with a smile. Of this great pantheon of heros, there was one person left in my childhood who was carrying on the old fight against tyranny. Her name was Aung San Suu Kyi. She was an opposition politician who lived under the odious military dictatorship in Myanmar and was under house arrest for 15 years. She was Myanmar’s hope for change as their regime slaughtered and oppressed its people for 20 years.
When a new election was held in 2015, and she peacefully assumed power in the country, my inner child rejoiced. I was seeing an old struggle give birth to a new democracy. And I, along with many others, thought of her as the Mandela of our time. How wrong we all were.
When the first reports came out of the Rakhine State, a region of northwest Myanmar occupied by the Rohingya, I was shocked but optimistic. Yes, there were hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing violence and persecution into neighboring Bangladesh. Yes, a UN report said that there was a “systematic ethnic cleansing campaign conducted by the Myanmar military.” But I was always of the opinion that Suu Kyi would work hard to prevent genocide and allow the refugees to return safely back to their homes.
When months went by and the crisis worsened and Suu Kyi did nothing, a sour taste developed in my mouth. It took me a long time to see the writing on the wall. She seemed to tak the other side. As the Rohingya began fleeing in large numbers in 2013, she said in an interview that there was fear on “both sides.” She declined to address the army’s role in the violence and instead spoke of the Buddhist fear of “global Muslim power.”
She visited Rakhine state for the first time at the beginning of this month. Her comments eroded whatever faith I had left that she’d resolve the crisis. She said that she would work to calm the violence and bring back refugess, but only those refugees who had proper identification and paperwork showing their citizenship status. Very few Rohingya have any such paperwork on account of their repression under the old military regime who systematically discriminated against them. Thus, under her plan, the vast majority of Rohingya seeking refuge in Bangladesh will be unable to return to their rightful country and homes. Suu Kyi appears to be interested in justice and human rights, but only for Buddhists.
I am still coming to terms with Suu Kyi. I cannot deny to her the fact that she struggled for two decades for democracy in her country and I would not want to. But she is not an angelic freedom fighter. She does not inhabit the same moral plane as Nelson Mandela and others. Her handling of the Rohingya crisis is nothing short of shocking, and I hope that she will govern her country for the good of all its people and not solely the Buddhist majority. My interest in Suu Kyi has come full circle from my childhood. I lived to see what she would do when released from confinement and given state power. She has taught me to be more cautious about those who cry for justice from prison cells or house arrest, be they in Iran, North Korea, Syria or elsewhere. Sometimes, perhaps rarely, we get a Mandela, but more likely, we will end up with a Suu Kyi.
