Suu Kyi's Fall from an International Icon to a Burman Nationalist leader | Professor Dr. Abid Bahar

I am not a Rohingya myself but I have been working as a researcher on the Rohingya for over 3 decades. My specialization is also on ethics of leadership. From this vantage point I see most nationalist leaders when come to power either become corrupted or become fascist in dealing with their own countrymen. Knowing

that very well Mohatma Gandhi, the spiritual leader of India, Martin Luther King of the US and Moulana Bhasani of Bangladesh didn't come to power.

The much praised Suu Kyi once an international icon even receiving the Noble Peace Prize but as the opposition leader in Burma remained silent to a genocide that took place in her own country. Now she even opened her mouth and is branding the Rohingya as the "illegal immigrants from Bangladesh." To my knowledge after 1971 Bangladesh liberation war, if there were any group of illegal immigrants entered Arakan from Bangladesh, it was a sizable number of Bangladeshi Rakhine people. There have been estimates of 55 to 58 thousand Bangladeshi Rakhines entered from Bangladesh into Arakan illegally. Aye Maung, the master mind behind the June massacre is one of the illegal Rakhines from Bangladesh. We know that in 1978 there were 200,000 Rohingyas forced out to Bangladesh but Burma under international pressure accepted them because they carried Burmese nationality cards. In 1992-93 there were over 300,000 Rohingyas forced out of Burma who entered Bangladesh and the flow still continues.

In her recent assertion about the Rohingya, I am pretty sure Suu Kyi is either ignorant about the Rohingya history or she is showing opportunism when she was expected to show determination. Nicholas Farrelly, a Myanmar expert at Australian National University, told AFP that Suu Kyi's comments reflected domestic opinion.
"If she makes a mis-step, she could alienate her political base which is reluctant to have anything to do with the Rohingya," he said.
"She appears to be pivoting away from international human rights groups and is echoing sentiments inside Myanmar."

True, Suu Kyi is a devoted Burman Buddhist which ideological commitment forced her to take the present position.
She is not alone in this, "Leaders in Myanmar feel international support flowing towards the Rohingya is inappropriate and that it misunderstands the situation."Recently, Suu Kyi was attributed by her party members as an authoritarian leader. Fortunately she is not yet in power.
True, in her taking the new stand similar to the military rulers, surely she shows her lack of spirituality and her knowledge about the Rohingya history. To many of her admirers who didn't know the true Suu Kyi, she now reduces her position from being the defender of global human rights into a local Burman leader going with the nationalist furry and flow which in the end might even increase more suffering for the unprotected Rohingya.

Source:Here