Peter Popham
Peter Popham on why Aun San Suu Kyi is silent on the murder of Muslims
There is no concealing the
disappointment felt by many of Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters around the
world in the face of her failure to denounce the attacks on Burmese Muslims by members of her own community, the Buddhists who constitute more than 90 per cent of the population.
Perhaps
she couldn’t stop it, people say, but at least she could have taken a
stand. She is seen as the teacher, the mother of her nation; moral
rebirth has been at the centre of her mission ever since she signed up
with the democracy movement; her most influential essay was titled A Revolution of the Spirit. How can she possibly stay silent as Muslims are slaughtered?
The
first attacks came in June 2012, just as she was embarking on her first
trip abroad in 24 years. A young Buddhist woman in Arakan state, which
borders the overwhelmingly Muslim nation of Bangladesh in the west, was
raped and murdered by two Muslim men. In retaliation, a group of
non-Muslim men stopped a bus and killed the Muslims on board, and the
spiral of murder quickly got out of control. There were many victims on
both sides but the Muslims were in the majority. Many thousand lost
their homes and were resettled in squalid temporary camps.
Another, even more serious wave of attacks
came in October. Unlike June’s events, these were initiated by the
majority community and closely co-ordinated, as a recent investigation
by Human Rights Watch explained in detail
(http://www.hrw.org/features/burma-ethnic-cleansing-arakan-state). And
although there have been no recent attacks as vicious or widespread as
October’s, the fire has not burned out. Instead it has spread across the
country. And still Suu Kyi holds her tongue.
How are we to explain it?
The
glaringly obvious reason is that, upon her election to parliament in
April 2012, Suu Kyi became a politician. As Hillary Clinton presciently
warned her a few months earlier, there is a world of difference between
being an activist and a politician. In the heyday of her activism,
addressing crowds gathered outside her home in Rangoon in the mid-90s,
Suu Kyi happily teased and chastised the ruling military regime. Today
she sits alongside them in parliament: one-quarter of the seats are
occupied by unelected soldiers.
And not only does she have to share their space, she has to do business with them – serious business.
Burma
is scheduled to hold general elections, followed by presidential ones
(the president is elected by members of parliament), in 2015. Suu Kyi’s
party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is much the most popular
in the country. If the elections are run fairly, like the by-elections
in 2012 that brought her to parliament, the NLD is likely to win by a
landslide. But if they are rigged, like the general elections of 2010,
that victory could be stolen. So between now and then she has two
pre-eminent challenges: to retain the support of the great majority of
her people; and to persuade the generals who still hold power behind the
scenes that she and her colleagues can be trusted.
And still Suu Kyi holds her tongue. How are we to explain it?
There
is a third challenge: to change the constitution. Suu Kyi has made it
clear in recent weeks that she hopes to become Burma’s president. But
Section 59 (f) of the 2008 constitution requires that none of the
children of a presidential candidate shall “be subject of a foreign
power or citizen of a foreign country” – and both of Suu Kyi’s sons are
British citizens. It appears that this requirement was written in
deliberately to bar her way to the highest office. To remove it would
require 75 per cent support in parliament. Until 2015, she is walking on
eggshells.
Suu
Kyi, then, has ample reason to choose her words with care. Her recent
affectionate descriptions of the army are examples of this. But why
can’t she denounce something as grotesque as the attacks on Muslims?
There
has been bad blood between Buddhists and Muslims in Burma for many
years. In particular in Arakan state, the issue of large-scale illegal
immigration of Muslims from Bangladesh has stoked riots and protests
over the course of many years. Anti-Muslim prejudice is common even at
the top of Suu Kyi’s party, and among leading dissident activists. If
Suu Kyi were to speak out loud and clear about the attacks she would win
the applause of people in the West. But it would be the quickest way
for her to plummet in the approval of the Burmese masses.
Some
believe that senior military figures hostile to her orchestrated the
violence in Arakan state last year for precisely this reason: by goading
Suu Kyi into speaking out on the issue, they hoped to destroy her
popularity. If that is true, she has disappointed them – and proved,
perhaps, that she can be as slippery a politician as the next one. That
may not endear her to the west, but shrewdness is a necessary attribute
of politicians everywhere; even those the world would prefer to regard
as saints.
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