TTHE COMMITTEE who awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, described it as “an important symbol in the fight against oppression” and an inspiration for those “who strive for democracy, human rights and ethnic reconciliation by peaceful means “. But to the crowd of demonstrators who gathered before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague this week, she is just the opposite: an apologist for military brutality, an oppressor of ethnic minorities and an accomplice to the genocide. “Aung San Suu Kyi, shame on you!” they chanted. As his procession passed, the windows tinted, hoots and hoots rose in crescendo.
Ms. Suu Kyi, who since 2016 has been the President of Myanmar on her behalf, was at the ICJ to defend his country against genocide charges in a lawsuit filed by The Gambia on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a group of Muslim countries. The case concerns the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group that has suffered varying degrees of persecution since the independence of Myanmar in 1948. In 2017, the Burmese army went wild in the Rohingya regions in the far west of the country, in response to attacks on military outposts by a small group of Rohingya guerrillas. The court heard horrific descriptions of shootings and throat cuts, with babies thrown into burning houses and women raped or stabbed in the vagina. Listening to the stories, Ms. Suu Kyi was seated, calm and calm, with fresh flowers in her hair, as there had always been in her decades of stubborn opposition to the military regime.
That a woman herself locked up by the Burmese army for 15 years would travel to the other end of the world to defend her was very surprised. In a sense, his battle against the generals continues. Although she heads civil government, she is not responsible for it. The constitution they put in place before authorizing democratic elections in 2015 made the military a law in its own right and gave it a quarter of the seats in parliament – enough to veto any constitutional amendment . Many admirers of Ms. Suu Kyi had tried to exonerate her from the pogrom against the Rohingya, claiming that she was powerless to prevent it and would only have weakened by sweeping her powerless.
Ms. Suu Kyi’s trip to The Hague validated this argument. It is one thing to maintain a pragmatic, albeit reprehensible, silence, it is another thing to be in defense of the military. Ms. Suu Kyi could, after all, have sent a lackluster official to present the Myanmar case. Instead, she announced her trip loud and clear, knowing full well that few Burmese have sympathy for the Rohingya, whom they mistakenly regard as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who threaten the Buddhist character of the nation. Rallies have taken place across Myanmar, hailing her as a fearless defender of national pride. It is hard to escape the conclusion that she is exploiting the misery of the Rohingya to increase her party’s prospects in the 2020 elections.
When the time came for Ms. Suu Kyi to plead her case, she was strangely mute. She disappointed those who hoped that once and for all she would turn out to be a shameless villain by denying that the Rohingya had been abused, as some of her government claimed. But neither did she admit the scale of the atrocities or the prominent role of the military in these events. Instead, she argued that the burning of villages and the robbery of almost a meter of Rohingya to neighboring Bangladesh should be seen as an unfortunate side effect of the ongoing war between the army and various groups of guerrilla warfare. Where there was clear evidence of wrongdoing by soldiers, she said, authorities were trying to bring those responsible to justice – although she also alluded to the lack of influence of her government on military justice. Nevertheless, the fact that there were courts martial, she argued, demonstrated that her government had no intention of committing genocide.
It was neither a resounding defense of the military, nor a sort of admission of guilt. This ambiguity probably reflects the real Ms. Suu Kyi. She is clearly nationalist, unhappy to see her country excoriated. It obviously wants its institutions to function better, but is not ready to tolerate outside interference to compensate for their shortcomings. She is not a full-fledged apologist for the military, but she does not trust anyone else to face the high ranking. The same stubborn belief that helped bring Myanmar out of the military regime, in other words, now stands in the way of justice for some of its most vulnerable residents.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the title “The Lady Has Two Faces”
