meh. she's been less than ideal on the Rohingya issue.
- Only outcome of not defending military at UN would be sanctions or civilian government losing some of the little power they have, which would only harm situation more.
- ASSK does not want genocide or anything like that. She is slandered by ignorant press.
Isn't failure to educate international press still a (big IMHO) failure?
Personally the result for me has been that she was once a kind of freedom hero, than became a kind of mass murderer and should have her Nobel prize revoked.
Then I read today that she's been almost a hostage of the military for all this time and she's getting some of my sympathy back again. However the trade she accepted to do feels bad and the signaling of being a hostage was totally missing.
What is she supposed to do? Come out and denounce the military publicly, effectivey destroying what little relationship and understanding they’ve built with the military? That doesn’t accomplish anything. She already did that and sat in prison for 15 years.
Nobel peace prizes and moralizing westerners don’t help Burma. There’s little reason for her to care about what they think.
She’s been public about her strategy. She’s always said the only way forward is to build understanding and relationship with military. To work with the scraps given to them. To work through peaceful means. It’s either that or nothing. Rising up won’t really work, they tried that in 1988 and the military just murdered and jailed people until they stopped.
She had two choices: 1) Say publicly that military are bad people, and erode what little power military affords NLD and fragile relationship between civilian government and military. Or 2) Have the press hate her for not saying words, and maintain the fragile understanding and peacemaking process with military.
She chose the least bad option, in support of civilian rule, democracy, and peace building. Publicly condemning military for Rohingya doesn’t accomplish anything for anyone.
"In 2012, she told reporters she did not know if the Rohingya could be regarded as Burmese citizens."
"However, she said that she wanted to work towards reconciliation and she cannot take sides as violence has been committed by both sides."
"State crime experts from Queen Mary University of London warned that Aung San Suu Kyi is "legitimising genocide" in Myanmar."
"Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a fellow peace prize holder, also criticised Suu Kyi's silence: in an open letter published on social media, he said: "If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep"
"In early October 2018, both the Canadian Senate and its House of Commons voted unanimously to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of her honorary citizenship."
She has been trying to build relationship with generals, and is not going to publicly denounce them just to achieve some kind of moral pageantry. Angering the military so she can appease people who don’t do anything for Burma is pointless.
If ASSK was in charge Rohingya situation would not happen. But she’s not in charge. Holding her to some impossible ideal is ridiculous. Blaming her for genocide is offensive. It’s just part of a game western academics, journalists, and moralizers like to play.
Her actions are completely understandable if you understand the political situation, and its history.
And for most Burmese the lack of support for her fledgling civilian government by the nations and journalists that condemn her has created deep resentment. Nobody here cares at all what they think.
Imagine how it feels to have people, who don’t even know the name of the generals, how the government works, or where Myanmar is on a map, tell us how evil ASSK is. The person who has sacrificed her whole family and life for peace and reconciliation.
The fact is is that what's happening to the Rohingya is a a genocide - and ASSK says nothing or even worse, tries to dismiss it or make excuses. As Desmond Tutu said in the statement I quoted, if the price of her position is silence, that's a price too high.
And Desmond Tutu’s letter is patronizing and ridiculous. She has no power over the Rakhine situation. None. The only power she had was negotiating with the military. She doesn’t need to be told that people don’t deserve to be victims of war and ethnic strife.
We stand with Aung San Suu Kyi until the end.
I suppose the Gies family should have walked outside and told the Nazi soldiers they were pieces of shit. That would be the morally right thing to do!? Get a grip. Sometimes speaking truth to power is just fucking dumb.
Do you think Burmese aren’t in the streets protesting because they approve of the government, or because they know they will get shot?
The obsession with defaming ASSK over the evil actions of the military is pathetic. It is so so low and pathetic how the international media relentlessly implies ASSK is secretly a supporter of genocide because she won’t tell the military off in public. All it accomplished was emboldening the military and damaging relations with the civilian government. Just so all the “journalists” could pat themselves on the back for being so courageous.