By Ashley Starr Kinseth

Al Jazeera

October 18, 2017

On the night of August 25, an attack on Myanmarsecurity forces by a handful of Rohingya militants in Northern Rakhine State prompted a brutal government counter-offensive that has, in turn, led to the greatest refugee crisis of the twenty-first century. Since then, more than 500,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, with some estimating that as many as 15,000 continue to make the dangerous journey each day. In fact, in terms of rate of escalation, this is the greatest mass exodus - and has the makings to become the most significant humanitarian catastrophe - since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when over 800,000 Hutus and moderate Tutsis were slaughtered over a mere 100-day period. 

To much of the international community, Myanmar's Rohingya crisis appears sudden, with few to no warning signs; indeed, it is only in recent weeks that the word "Rohingya" has begun to crop up in international headlines and to seep into the world's collective consciousness and conscience. Yet as a human rights lawyer who has long followed the Rohingya situation - and was present in Northern Rakhine the morning the violence erupted - I can say there is no question that the crisis unfolding now has been in the making for years, if not decades. Perhaps more importantly, by international legal and historical standards, the crisis bears all the characteristics of a genocide in bloom.

In fact, for those who have followed the situation closely, the use of the word "genocide" should come as no surprise. For generations, the Rohingya have faced an ever-growing list of discriminatory policies and state-sanctioned rights violations designed to cull the unwanted minority's numbers and force them from their ancestral lands: key markers of genocide. 

The oldest among them have seen their citizenship revoked and their children born stateless; they suffer tight restrictions on movement and access to education and healthcare; and the number of children a couple may bear has been legally limited to two. 

The Rohingya also regularly endure extortions for minor "offenses"; they have been barred from gathering in groups of more than five and require permission to hold routine events (like marriages); and have even faced limitations on the materials used to build or repair homes and other buildings (brick and concrete being considered too "permanent" for the unwanted minority). Direct reports from at least one prison also indicate that some prisoners from other parts of the country had been released early on condition that they resettle in Northern Rakhine in order to maximise the Buddhist population and limit Rohingya landholdings.

The Rohingya have also endured periodic crackdowns designed to drive them from their land, dating at least as far back as Operation King Dragon in 1978, with more recent pogroms in 1991 and 2012. Since 2012, smaller spates of violence have erupted, each time accompanied by reports of government and mob-led village raids and burnings, rapes and murders (sometimes two-sided), and ever-increasing restrictions on Rohingya movement and activity. 

Yet the present crisis undoubtedly represents the most extreme and disproportionate onslaught of violence, with widely corroborated horror tales from Rohingya refugees of savagely violent gang rapes, merciless tortures and beheadings, and even babies tossed into fires. 

If not adequately frightening on their own, these facts must be placed in a disconcertingly modern context: for there has never been a more powerful tool for the rapid dissemination of hate speech and racist-nationalist vitriol than Facebook and other social media. From a Western perspective, the dangers are easy to spot; one need only look to social media's role in recent elections and political debates to witness the rate at which false information can spread, and the surprising number of individuals who can fall prey to hateful and dangerous rhetoric, a phenomenon presently blazing across Myanmar society. 

Yet perhaps most disturbingly, historically, one can hardly fail to see the parallels between the current use of social media in Myanmar and that of radio in Rwanda to incite mob violence. The key exception is that social media is by all accounts an even faster, more graphic, immersive, "democratic", and ultimately, dangerous tool for the dissemination of hate speech: perhaps the most significant precursor to genocide.

Still, despite these new realities, the conflict we see now may once have been preventable, if not for the dancing around international law and realpolitiking at which the world's governments have played ever since the term "genocide" first entered the international legal lexicon in the aftermath of the Holocaust. 

In the wake of World War II, the international community of states came together in an unprecedented manner, forming the United Nations, and - as one of its first orders of business - passing the Genocide Convention in 1948, which forbade a series of acts committed with the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group".

The Convention placed heavy weight on the use of the term "genocide" by governments - essentially requiring that, once a party to the Convention recognised that a genocide was occurring in another state, it bore a responsibility to act to stop the atrocities. Unfortunately, the planet's collective memory and joint resolve proved short-lived, as international governments - and particularly the United States - have spent decades performing mind-bending linguistic backflips to avoid public use of the term.

Instead, we see politicians using turns of phrase such as "genocidal acts may have been committed" to circumvent outright use of the word itself - and in turn, to avoid violating what is perhaps international law's most sacred treaty. 

It thus comes as little surprise that the Rohingya crisis has until recently garnered little international attention. In fact, to date, only one world leader - France's newly-minted President Macron - has dared utter the word, vowing on September 20 to work with the Security Council to condemn "this genocide which is unfolding, this ethnic cleansing." 

Unfortunately, the very structure of the UN makes coordinated intervention (like deployment of a peacekeeping mission) highly unlikely, as this would surely be met by a Security Council veto by China. Indeed, such intra-UN constraints help to explain why - though many in the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide have long been aware of the Rohingya crisis - the Special Adviser has spoken rarely and hesitantly on the situation. 

This is despite the fact that the Myanmar government has engaged in at least four of the five genocidal acts outlined in the Genocide Convention, including "killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group."

But if not genocide, what might we call the horrific situation unfolding in Northern Rakhine? No doubt the "Rohingya issue" is viewed much differently throughout Myanmar, where most believe the Rohingya to be illegal Bengali migrants of questionable (or at least exceedingly "different") moral character; reproducing at a high and disproportionate rate (factually disproven); and hell-bent on Islamicising the predominantly Buddhist nation. Indeed, I have met many educated Myanmar citizens - from aid workers to fellow human rights lawyers - who carry these views, and who are quick to except the Rohingya from rights that they would otherwise view as inherent to all human beings. It is this pervasive dehumanisation of the Rohingya - backed by military and religious forces that rely on the existence of a despised "other" to maintain some semblance of power amidst Myanmar's precarious democratisation - that have allowed for the Rohingya's continuing persecution.

Admittedly, the atrocities we witness today in Northern Rakhine are not entirely one-sided. Surely, many Rakhine Buddhists also suffer the effects of conflict, and international media should also report on this suffering. Yet having visited many Rohingya and Rakhine villages, and remaining in touch with many Rohingya and Rakhine contacts, I also could not in good conscience equate the two groups' experiences or poverty levels, as many in Myanmar print and social media circles routinely demand of international observers. 

Rakhine Buddhists are surely poorer than most ethnic groups in Myanmar (excepting, perhaps, only the Rohingya), and many do currently suffer alongside the Rohingya in terms of physical and food security. However, it would be false to suggest that as many Rakhine Buddhist villages have been looted and razed, or as many Rakhine Buddhist individuals raped, tortured, slaughtered, or otherwise victimised, as have the Rohingya. And while I know of some Rakhine Buddhists who have also become internally displaced - no doubt under deeply abhorrent circumstances - the fact is they possess the freedom of movement to do so and a greater chance of attaining aid and even alternative livelihoods elsewhere in Myanmar. 

All that said, if Myanmar continues to refuse access to Northern Rakhine by neutral observers, then there will be no way for the international media to provide the balanced reporting frequently demanded by Myanmar's citizenry. Instead, as it stands, we outside observers must rely either on our own direct experience to date - as I have here - or on reports flooding across the border from, one must imagine, the most vulnerable Rohingya. In the meantime, it appears that the international community of states, favouring inaction, has tiptoed around such deeply disturbing refugee accounts for far too long. And from the perspective of an international lawyer, based on the information that is presently available to outsiders, there can only be one word for the Rohingya experience in Myanmar: and that word is genocide.

By Meenakshi Ganguly
Human Rights Watch

Alleged Atrocities Need International Inquiry

Forward

September 28, 2017

Blame for the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar is very easily traceable to British Colonial times.

By Salma Yaqoob 

Al Jazeera

September 19, 2017

Condemnation of the brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing being carried out against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is growing around the world, with the Dalai Lama, the Pope, Nobel Laureates and world leaders from many countries calling for an end to hostilities.

There is no easy way to end the suffering there, but it is imperative that the world speaks out as one against such atrocities, yet the UK government's voice has barely been heard at all. Of all the countries that should be playing a role in protecting the vulnerable Muslim minority people in Myanmar, the UK should be leading efforts, as blame for the conflict in those lands is very easily traceable back to British Colonial times.

Even without knowing the dark secrets of British involvement, people are horrified about what is happening in Myanmar, with hundreds of thousands of people forced from their homes by violent vigilantes, either led by or with help from the army and stories of rapes and murder commonplace, alongside the dramatic footage of burning villages. The hatred which has been stirred up by nationalists is all too obvious in the TV reports and the Islamophobia that has been created by (among others) Ashin Wirathu, a monk who calls himself the "Buddhist Bin Laden", is truly frightening.

If the UK and other western countries do not tackle this and condemn the attacks on a Muslim minority people, this inaction will again be seized upon as evidence of the West's hatred of Islam by extremists with another agenda. They will do nothing to help the Rohingya but will use their name for propaganda and recruiting more fighters for their cause, just as they have with previous examples of Muslims being persecuted.

The Rohingya have been living in those lands for over two hundred years, but resentment over the internal displacement of Buddhists stems back to 1826 when Britain annexed the part of Myanmar where most Rohingya Muslims live today. Bengali Muslims arrived in large numbers to become labourers and administrators for the British, but it is not the colonists who are blamed for this in today's nationalist narrative, but the descendants of these migrant workers.

Myanmar gained independence from Britain in 1948, but the position of the Rohingya Muslims has become ever more perilous. The United Nations has described the Rohingya Muslims as the most persecuted minority in the world. Attempts at creating an independent state for themselves have failed, and they have been denied citizenship in their own country since 1982 and with it the right to education, healthcare or even property ownership.

Far from speaking out against the violence, Aung San Suu Kyi has hidden behind the same language of having to fight terrorists as was used by Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s, Western leaders in the "War on terror" in Iraq and Libya, Israel's persecution of Palestine and Saudi Arabia destroying the lives of the poor people in Yemen. Although she is not alone in her hypocrisy, as a Nobel Laureate, expectations of her are much higher. Yet her response so far has been mealy-mouthed, and the British government have not held her to account when they most certainly have the opportunity to do so. Last year the UK sold weapons worth half a million pounds to the government in Myanmar, which could very well be used against the Rohingya now. £250k was taken from the UK's aid budget to train the army there, which in this climate of violence is completely inexcusable. 

Aung San Suu Kyi has personal as well as political ties with the UK, having a British husband and two sons born and raised in the UK. She not only graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, but returned to live in the UK after working briefly at the UN. She married British scholar Michael Aris in 1972, and lived in the UK until 1988, giving birth to and raising their two sons Alexander and Kim Aris there. Her sons continued to be raised in the UK by their father when she returned to Burma to first look after her ailing mother and then to lead the political opposition, and hence are British citizens.

When the Taliban blew up ancient monuments to Buddha in Afghanistan, there was an immediate angry reaction to the desecration of such important artefacts of cultural significance - rightly so. The problem is that rape, murder, and the destruction of people's homes in Myanmar has not inspired the same level of reaction.

The UK needs to step up and provide leadership in alleviating the suffering in Myanmar:

1. The Myanmar government is stopping UN aid from getting in: we must demand that blocks are removed immediately so that humanitarian aid can reach people. Charities are raising money already, so we must ensure it gets to where people need it most. There is also a huge humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh where the UK must play a leading role in aid efforts.

2. Our government must acknowledge the UN findings of ethnic cleansing and "slow genocide" and the hate speech being used by the military, Buddhist extremists and nationalists against Rohingya Muslims. We must stop using the language of "ethnic tensions", as this is misleading and disingenuous; instead, we must join the coalition of genocide charities, Nobel Peace Prize winners, and faith leaders in condemning what is happening in the strongest possible terms.

3. We must demand unequivocal condemnation from Aung Sang Suu Kyi: A UN report has already gathered damning evidence. Its recommendations need to be implemented, and the UK should use its place on the Security Council to more effect.

4. We must demand that citizenship rights be immediately given to Rohingya Muslims, the denial of which over many decades has made this latest persecution easier.

5. UK aid to Burma must be stopped (especially military training) until the situation is acknowledged and a way of measuring the results of any such training is established.

6. We should propose the re-implementation of sanctions which were lifted when "democracy" was supposed to have been introduced. The current human rights violations are not just on a par with, but even worse than those that had been taking place under the military regime.

Salma Yaqoob is an activist, commentator and broadcaster who was named by the Guardian as: "The most prominent Muslim woman in British public life". Harper's Bazaar magazine also named her among the thirty most influential women in the country. She appears regularly on Question Time, where she is best known for having given the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith a dressing down over expenses and inequality. Salma has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, Channel Four & ITV news and written columns for the Guardian and others. She has received numerous awards, including an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University for services to public life, having served as an elected councillor in the city. Salma is a qualified psychotherapist with a degree in Human and Applied Psychology, as well as Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling and Integrative Psychotherapy. She works as a Senior Manager in an NHS Mental Health Trust.

By Al Jazeera

September 11, 2017

A resident of Myanmar's Rakhine State discusses daily life and the abuses and attacks Rohingya endure.

Maungdaw, Rakhine State, Myanmar - For all my life, all 24 years of it, I've been a prisoner in this open air jail you know as Rakhine State.

I was born in Myanmar, as were my parents, but my citizenship was snatched away before I was even conceived.

My movement, education, access to healthcare and career have been heavily restricted because of my ethnicity.

I'm banned from working in the government, denied the right to pursue higher education, barred from visiting the capital, Yangon, and even stopped from leaving northern Rakhine State.

I'm subjected to the worst form of discrimination, all because I'm a Rohingya - a Rohingya Muslim.

For years, my people, who have been denied their most basic rights, are killed on a near daily basis. Shot dead in plain sight, forcibly and systematically made homeless, our homes razed in front of our very eyes; we're the victims of a brutal state.

For you to fully appreciate what our conditions are like, I'm going to use an analogy: imagine a mouse stuck in a cage with a hungry cat. That's what it's like for the Rohingya.

Our only method of survival is to run, or hope someone helps us get out.

For those of us that have remained, there's a systematic campaign to separate us from the wider Rakhine community.

We're called "Kalar" [a slur often used against Muslims] by Buddhists to our faces. Whether you're a child or an old man, no one escapes the abuse.

We face discrimination at schools and at hospitals, and there's been a boycott campaign by Buddhists to avoid us at all costs.

"Only buy from Buddhists," they say. "If you give a penny to a Buddhist, they'll help build a Pagoda (temple), but if you give a penny to a Muslim, they'll build a mosque."

These kinds of comments, they've become the norm and helped encourage Buddhist extremists to attack us.

When Aung San Suu Kyi, a Noble Peace Prize winner, won parliamentary elections in 2015 and ended half a century of dominance by the military, we had high hopes change was coming.

We were confident that this woman, hailed as a beacon of democracy, would end our abuse and oppression.

Sadly, it soon became clear that not only would she not be our voice, she would ignore our suffering.

Her silence showed she was complicit in the violence.

In the end, she failed us; our last hope, failed us.

In 2012, a huge number of the Rohingya were slaughtered in one of the worst bouts of communal violence. Around 140,000 were internally displaced, an event that would repeat itself in 2016.

Shot, slaughtered, and burned alive in front of their families, the violence last October would give rise to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a small group of men who decided to defend themselves and fight back.

Armed with just sticks and stones, they knew they couldn't fend off the well-equipped Myanmar army but they tried nonetheless.

Still, now our sisters and mothers are forced to give birth in paddy fields as we run for our lives in this violence that you say is between two equal sides. It is not.

Children being shot at as they flee and women's bodies floating in rivers is not an equal fight.

We're facing extinction, and unless the international community stands with us, one of the most persecuted people in the world, we will face genocide and you, you will all be a witness to it.

The author of this letter has requested anonymity due to fear of attacks from the government. 

He spoke to Al Jazeera's Faisal Edroos who can be followed on Twitter at @FaisalEdroos

The letter was edited for clarity.

By Shashank Bengali

Los Angeles Times 

September 9, 2017

She was once synonymous with the struggle against oppression. In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, she called for “a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless.”

But Aung San Suu Kyi has missed perhaps her greatest opportunity to make good on those words as the leader of Myanmar’s first civilian government after a half-century of military rule.

Suu Kyi has watched as 270,000 minority Rohingya Muslims — one-quarter of their population — have fled Myanmar over the past two weeks, escaping a bloody military crackdown in which soldiers set fire to homes and shot civilians as they tried to escape, according to accounts published by human rights groups.

Many have crammed into muddy, overcrowded camps in next-door Bangladesh, whose authorities this week raised concerns that Myanmar’s military was planting land mines along the border while civilians fled. Dozens have drowned in river crossings. In displacement camps inside Myanmar, Rohingya activists say the government has blocked delivery of food and humanitarian supplies.

As condemnations pour in from across the world, Suu Kyi has defended not the displaced Rohingya but the army, saying critics of the crackdown were being deceived by “a huge iceberg of misinformation.” The army calls its actions “clearance operations” aimed at Rohingya insurgents who attacked police on Aug. 25, killing 12 officers.

Reconciling an activist’s ideals with the hard realities of governing is never easy, but rarely has an international icon fallen so fast as Suu Kyi. Her tepid response to the Rohingya crisis has tarnished a reputation built during the 15 years she spent under house arrest opposing military dictators in the country formerly known as Burma.

The United Nations chief has warned that ethnic cleansing could be taking place. Two other Nobel Peace Prize winners, South Africa’s Desmond Tutu and 20-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, have implored Suu Kyi, 72, to speak up. Other commentators have urged the Nobel Committee to revoke her prize.

“She has a responsibility to give protection to civilians,” said a prominent Rohingya activist in Myanmar, who requested anonymity because authorities have warned people against criticizing the military campaign.

“And yet she is actively engaging with the army in terms of its operations to expel an entire population. She is a part of it.”

After leading her National League of Democracy party to an overwhelming win in 2015 parliamentary elections – and then devising the powerful post of state counselor to bypass a law that prevented her from becoming president – Suu Kyi faced tremendous expectations in turning around one of Asia’s poorest countries, one still wracked by several long-running insurgencies.

The Obama administration lifted economic sanctions in 2016, rewarding Myanmar’s democratic transition, although by that point there were serious questions about Suu Kyi’s commitment to the ideas expressed in her Nobel speech.

She has consistently declined to condemn abuses against the Rohingya, an ethnic and religious minority of more than 1 million people in a country that is 90% Buddhist, often saying that Buddhists have suffered too. Her government has echoed the military’s view that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though many trace their roots in Myanmar back several generations, and has continued a policy of denying them citizenship and other basic rights.

After a 2012 outbreak of communal violence in the western state of Rakhine in which scores of Buddhists and Rohingya died, 120,000 Rohingya lost their homes and were corralled into displacement camps. Many others live in what are essentially open-air prisons, their villages watched over by security forces.

The rise of a well-armed Rohingya insurgency has generated public support for military operations in Rakhine. A rising Buddhist nationalism has fanned the flames, led by hard-line monks who claim that Muslims want to overtake the country.

All but cut off from the world during the years of her house arrest, Suu Kyi was a steely, enigmatic symbol whose political inclinations — beyond ending the army’s kleptocratic rule — were not well known. Since the democratic transition began, Western journalists increasingly challenged her on the Rohingya issue, and Suu Kyi began to flash annoyance in interviews.

Her allies say she is trapped between international expectations and domestic political realities. She is known for a regal bearing that borders on haughty, but her powers are sharply limited. The army controls the key security-related ministries and one-quarter of seats in Parliament, and enjoys no civilian oversight.

“She really is in a very awkward position on this,” said an advisor to the Myanmar government who requested anonymity to speak freely.

“If she were to speak out more vociferously in defense of the Rohingya, she would lose a lot of her domestic support. In a country that’s been in relative isolation for a long period of time, with low levels of education, people can have fairly bigoted views, and the Buddhist majority are fairly unsympathetic to the plight of the Rohingya.”

Some say she may also worry for her safety.

This year, U Ko Ni, an advisor to Suu Kyi who was drafting a new constitution that would roll back the military’s powers, was assassinated at the international airport in Yangon. The brazen killing appeared to stun Suu Kyi, who waited several weeks before issuing a public statement about it.

Myanmar nationalists have called for tougher action against “Bengali terrorists” since the Aug. 25 attacks, which followed the report of a commission led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The commission called on the government to end the “enforced segregation” of Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine state, ensure access for humanitarian groups, revise citizenship laws that exclude the Rohingya and end restrictions on freedom of movement.

Thet Thet Khine, a lawmaker from Suu Kyi’s party, said the government was committed to implementing the recommendations. But she said the international community was wrong to view Rakhine state as purely a human rights issue.

“It is also an issue of security and economic development,” Thet Thet Khine said. “In the short term we have to work with the military. This is a terrorism issue superimposed on a communal crisis. The local people don’t trust the Bengali Muslim people.”

Suu Kyi “has to reconcile between the international community and the local community, and they are not in line,” she said. “She is trying her best.”

Others gave up on her long ago.

“I think she cares about power,” the Rohingya activist said. “She’s saying, ‘I’m not a human rights activist. I’m a politician.’ Any leader who cares about human rights would distance herself from mass atrocities. She is failing to do so.”

Myanmar stands as unstable and fractious as ever, is Aung San Suu Kyi still committed to the ideals she had when she came to power?

By Oliver Ward

Asean Today

August 22, 2017

During Xi Jinping’s state visit to the UK in 2015, Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, took the opportunity to praise the leader of the opposition in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi. During his introductory address, he lauded Mrs Suu Kyi as “the noble peace prize winner, democracy champion and international symbol of the innate human right to freedom.” Now, more than 18-months into her leadership term, the situation in Myanmar is beginning to make his comments look misplaced.

She began her leadership with hope and promise

When the National League for Democracy (NLD) came to power after the general elections in November 2015, with Aung San Suu Kyi at the helm, the population hoped for their leader to bring peace to ethnic conflicts and promote democratic values across the country.

Despite the military’s lingering power within government, Aung San Suu Kyi enjoyed some early success. She freed 69 student activists who had been jailed for their involvement in education protests the previous year and immediately established a UN advisory commission to offer counsel on the situation of the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. She also entered peace negotiations with armed groups from the Kachin and Shan states in an attempt to bring peace to the regions.

Instead of bringing peace to Myanmar, conflicts have escalated under her leadership

Despite her initial triumphs, Aung San Suu Kyi has been unable to fulfil her promises of bringing peace to Myanmar. The Rohingya situation has dominated international headlines for the alleged crimes against humanity taking place across the Rakhine State, yet Aung San Suu Kyi has remained silent on the issue. In the northern Shan and Kachin states, heavy artillery and air strikes in January led to a further 6,000 displaced civilians as fighting continues to rage across the region.

Since her initial decision to set up the UN advisory commission led by Kofi Anan, Aung San Suu Kyi has refused to cooperate with any UN attempts to investigate the Rohingya situation. Her government refused to grant entry visas to Myanmar for the three UN experts tasked with investigating violence against Muslims in the country. When a fact-finding mission did go ahead, Aung San Suu Kyi’s government removed the top UN official in the country from her post and distanced herself from the report’s findings.

Is bringing peace to Myanmar still a priority of her government? 

Given her reluctance to engage with UN attempts to investigate the atrocities committed and her lack of success in bringing stability to northern Myanmar, it would be fair to assume that bringing peace to the country is no longer of primary concern to her government.

At an event to mark the first anniversary of the creation of the State Counsellor’s Office earlier this year, Aung San Suu Kyi advised, “don’t only think about self-interest,” she added, “if the public can take pride in our civil servants, we will be able to take pride in our country.”

But she might have benefited from taking her own advice when filling the positions of her own government. She was obsessed with filling positions with those loyal to her and the party. Several members of her government have phoney degrees, prompting questions about the suitability of their appointments to the national government. Suu Kyi also allegedly instructed NLD legislators not to raise tough questions to her in parliament. Her government appointments suggest that for Aung San Suu Kyi, self-preservation and loyalty is a higher priority than appointing experienced, qualified and capable ministers, up to the difficult task of bringing peace to the fractious country.

She wants to maintain a good relationship with the army, at the expense of minorities

It is not only her pursuit of peace which has had to take a back seat now she has come to power, it seems she has also forgotten about her commitment to championing rights for minority groups.

In 2015 the NLD asked Muslim candidates not to run as election candidates and since she has come to power, leading figures in her NLD party have been openly unsympathetic to rights of minority groups. Ko Ko Gyi called the Rohingya “terrorists” and accused them of infringing on Myanmar’s sovereignty. Nyan Win, NLD spokesman also said: “the Rohingya are not our citizens”.

While Suu Kyi herself may not be anti-Muslim or anti-minorities, she knows that by defending the Muslim minority, she risks losing the backing of Buddhist elements in the country and will ignite clashes with the army. Rather than risk this, she seems content to let the promotion of human rights for minorities take a less prominent role in her government.

The government are silencing critics through repressive media restrictions

However, curbing the free press is certainly becoming a leading feature in her administration. Between coming to power in 2016 and the start of 2017, 38 people faced online defamation charges for criticising her government. The 66D clause was the same clause in the telecommunications law that the military government used against Aung San Suu Kyi’s own supporters before she came to power. Now she is wielding it against her own critics.

Activist, Aung Win Hlaing was imprisoned for 9 months after criticising the NLD in a Facebook post and calling President Htin Kyaw an “idiot”. Three journalists were also put on trial under the Unlawful Associations Act for meeting armed ethnic groups in Shan State in a clear clamp down on the free press.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s advisor, Win Htein remembers a conversation the two shared in 1988, “she told me since she decided to get involved in politics, she would change everything. Any criticism directed towards her, she wouldn’t care”. Now in 2017, her words seem hollow as Suu Kyi’s government represents more continuity with her predecessors than change.

Her government cares about criticism from the army, so they allow minority rights to be abused. They care about criticism from the Buddhist majority, so they no longer champion Muslim rights. They care about public criticism, so they imprison poets and activists for posting critical Facebook statuses.

The Aung San Suu Kyi who won a Nobel Prize and made speeches standing on tables about the importance of democracy and human rights are almost unrecognisable to the woman in government today. Rather than representing the solution, she has become part of the problem, standing idle while Myanmar descends into genocide. If the Aung San Suu Kyi of 1988 could have a conversation with the woman of today would she still see herself as the noble peace prize winner and democracy champion that John Bercow described in 2015? Almost certainly not.

By Francis Wade

The Washing Post

August 12, 2017

For years, Burma’s state-run media viciously denounced Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet this week, the country’s de facto leader endorsed the very organizations that led the charge, declaring that anyone eager to understand the government should “read the newspapers and listen to the news. .. released by the government.” Her statement echoed the commands of the military junta that ruled before her, but it was not altogether out of character. Burma’s civilian government has increasingly cracked down on independent journalists and activists, dispelling hopes that the democratic transition would break the military’s oppressive style of rule.

Since the National League for Democracy (NLD), the erstwhile figurehead of Burma’s pro-democracy movement, took power in April 2016, a puzzling paradox has emerged. At least 80 people have been arrested under the archaic Telecommunications Law that restricts free speech online – a leap from the seven cases filed under the military-backed government. The recent arrest of prominent journalist Swe Win on accusations of defaming a firebrand anti-Muslim monk adds to a growing fear that as the transition advances, media freedom is conversely being tightened.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s government faces a daunting task in wresting ownership of the government from a military that retains considerable power. Yet, among those arrested are critics of the NLD itself. This raises serious questions about the country’s democratic transition. Under military rule, the party campaigned relentlessly to limit the military’s role in political life. But now, factions of the party appear to be aligned with the army’s zero-tolerance position on public dissent.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the party’s crackdown on the free press. In late June, three local journalists were arrested and charged under the Unlawful Associations Act — a law that was often used by the military to arbitrarily imprison dissidents and members of ethnic opposition groups — for reporting on a drug-burning ceremony by a rebel army. The NLD could have taken the military to task on this issue, highlighting the fact that similar ceremonies have been attended over the years by generals, U.N. officials and foreign diplomats and that dozens of interlocutors of various stripes have met with armed groups during recent cease-fire talks.

But it didn’t. Under pressure to explain the arrests, Aung San Suu Kyi deflected, arguing that it was a matter for the courts and not the government. Aung San Suu Kyi knows, however, that the court system remains beholden to the military and is unlikely to defend the free press. Then, when the U.N. special rapporteur on Burma, Yanghee Lee, tried to visit the town where the journalists are being held, she was denied access. The government justified the decision on the grounds that it disagreed with Lee’s end-of-mission statement, which was critical of the country’s human rights record. It also threatened to deny visas to a U.N. fact-finding mission charged with looking into military abuses against ethnic minorities — yet another indication of its intolerance of negative press.

The NLD’s actions are particularly disappointing because its ranks are populated by hundreds of luminaries of the pro-democracy movement who spent years behind bars for doing exactly what this new crop of political prisoners is doing: calling out the shortcomings of authority in Burma and illuminating critical issues — military abuse, corruption and so forth — that affect the country’s most vulnerable. The NLD’s inability (or unwillingness) to engage with criticism of its handling of the transition is fundamentally at odds with the promise of pluralistic change that gained the party such overwhelming support just over a year ago.

Analysts have spoken of the trade-offs the government needs to make to persuade the military to open itself to reform. There is some truth in that. And, indeed, there are some in the NLD who oppose the party’s stance on free speech and are seeking ways to revise the law. Yet the refusal to condemn the jailing of its own critics reflects a deeper problem. Authoritarianism, if left to develop long enough, can produce a culture that envelops even those who outwardly resist it.

This paradox has left the country’s political landscape as uncertain as ever. In Burma today, the uncertainty over what lines can and cannot be crossed is breeding a culture of fear that is entirely antithetical to the democratic compact. “Without a revolution of the spirit,” Aung San Suu Kyi once said, “the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.” Today, it seems, the momentum toward that goal is being compromised by the very same party that once championed that revolution.

Francis Wade is a journalist and the author of "Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and The Making of a Muslim ‘Other.’"

By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim

Al-Arabiya

August 12, 2017

As the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar is getting worse by the day, we must now acknowledge that the United Nations is failing to enforce the principles of its own 1948 Genocide Convention.

Leaked documents from earlier this year described the office of the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Reneta Lok-Dessallien, as ‘glaringly dysfunctional’, in no small part due to her putting human rights considerations on the back-burner, in favour of economic development goals. She was accused by many of her own staff of having too cosy a relationship with the civilian government and the military elite, whilst the persecution of the Rohingya and other minorities dropped off her agenda.

Hoping that the new dawn of democracy ushered in by Aung San Suu Kyi will soon start to bear fruit, the UN in general, and Lok-Dessallien in particular, were content to watch from the sidelines as hundreds were killed and tens of thousands ethnically cleansed from villages, and many thousands more were forced to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh and Malaysia on rickety boats – only to be met with conditions little better than those they had just fled. The UN seemed to have embraced the Obama Administration’s ‘Strategic Patience’ doctrine with regards to Myanmar. Which is diplomatic speak for ‘do-nothing’.

Many were relieved when it was recently announced that Reneta Lok-Desallien was moved on from her position with the Myanmar mission, a couple of years ahead of schedule. But whether the incoming Coordinator will recalibrate the priorities of the office to give due attention to the gross human rights abuses in the country remains to be seen.

Perhaps now that the world’s largest intergovernmental organisation has failed to live up to it’s responsibility towards the Rohingya, the task may be better addressed by the second largest. The plight of the Rohingya has already featured prominently on the agenda of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s meeting of Foreign Ministers. In fact, the OIC held an Extraordinary Session earlier this year in Malaysia dedicated entirely to the situation of the Rohingya.

Not a good record

One concern might be that the OIC does not have a good record when it comes to conflict resolution. It is fundamentally handicapped in this regard, as it does not have the means by which to enforce its will. Resolutions are passed with little fanfare and go largely unnoticed outside the Muslim world. Often, their sole purpose is to mollify local populations.

Nevertheless, in this case the OIC may prove significantly more effective. As the second largest intergovernmental organisation, with a membership of fifty-seven states spread across four continents, and with a new dynamic secretary general in the form of Dr Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen, the organisation will have the verve to intervene on the issue that the UN is clearly lacking. And there are simple measures the OIC could pursue.

Firstly, the OIC can work with the UN and Myanmar authorities to investigate the allegations that militant Islamist groups are attempting to penetrate and hijack the Rohingya struggle. Though such allegations are anaemic at best, they offer a convenient excuse to the Myanmar authorities to pursue their policy of collective punishment while placating the international community and forcing it to turn a blind eye. Particularly now that ISIS is losing territory in the Middle East and are looking for new regions in the world where their poisonous ideology might find fertile ground.

Secondly, the persecution of the Rohingya has a sectarian dimension, as some of the key instigators promote these abuses in the name of a militant interpretation of Theravada Buddhism. The OIC, as a religious-based organisation, can reframe the conflict-resolution efforts of the international community in terms of an inter-faith dialogue amongst religious communities and their global leaders. The OIC itself claims to represent the global Muslim voice, and so it should be able to bring in leading global Muslim personalities who would already be acceptable and respected by the Buddhist leaders of the country.

Finally, the OIC can help relieve pressure on neighbouring countries that have taken in hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand and so on. The government of Bangladesh is justified in trying to ensure that the Rohingya do not become a permanent presence in their own country, as they simply don’t have the resources to absorb the kinds of numbers that are fleeing. The OIC could therefore organise a coordinated global effort to provide countries like Bangladesh the basic essentials to ensure the Rohingya are comfortable during their short tenure before they are able to return to their homeland.

The OIC does not have the happiest history when it comes to living up to its own founding principles. But on this occasion, they may well be able to succeed where the UN has failed. The Rohingya situation is providing it with an opportunity to redeem itself. And it can start with such simple measures which will have a real positive impact on the lives of so many people. Let us hope it seizes this opportunity with both hands.

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Azeem Ibrahim is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Policy and Adj Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. He completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge and served as an International Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a World Fellow at Yale. Over the years he has met and advised numerous world leaders on policy development and was ranked as a Top 100 Global Thinker by the European Social Think Tank in 2010 and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He tweets @AzeemIbrahim

By Olivia Enos and Hunter Marston

The Washington Post

July 19, 2017

Olivia Enos is a policy analyst in the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. Hunter Marston is a Washington-based Burma analyst who writes on U.S. foreign policy and Southeast Asia.

At the end of June, authorities in Burma — including the country’s leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi — denied United Nations investigators access to Rakhine state, where the Burmese military is allegedly abusing the Muslim minority Rohingya. The action placed Burma on a short list of nations that have denied U.N. access in their countries. The list includes the unsavory regimes of North Korea, Venezuela, Congo and Syria.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s decision is a huge disappointment to U.S. policymakers who hoped that the Obama-era velvet-glove approach to Burma (also known as Myanmar) would improve conditions for the nation’s long-suffering people.

Under President Barack Obama, policy regarding Burma changed dramatically. Long-standing sanctions were loosened, and Washington offered technical assistance ahead of national elections. Burma’s “opening” was hailed as proof that the new approach had worked.

The rose-colored view of Burma has continued in the Trump administration. The State Department recently upgraded Burma’s rank in its Trafficking in Persons report and removed the nation from its Child Soldier Prevention Act list. These diplomatic rewards are, at present, unmerited.

Now comes the denial of U.N. access, suggesting that the democratic transition in Burma has stalled, at the very least. At worst, it has seriously deteriorated.

After multiparty elections in 2015 brought Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD) to power, the international community hoped that Burma had finally taken a turn for the better — one that put it on solid footing for democratization. But elections alone do not a democracy make.

Burma’s democratization did not begin with a solid foundation. While the Obama administration described the 2015 elections as “credible, transparent, and inclusive,” many observers disagreed. And certainly the elections were far from being free and fair. All 1.3 million Rohingya – and hundreds of thousands of others — were not allowed to vote.

The military retains control over key government organs, the powerful Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Border Affairs, as well as the oft-overlooked General Administrative Department, which is responsible for matters of sub-national governance. Active-duty military hold a quarter of all parliamentary seats, effectively granting the army a veto over constitutional amendments, which require a 75 percent vote of approval. If that weren’t enough, the 2008 Constitution grants the commander in chief of the armed forces the right to declare a state of national emergency and retake political power whenever he deems it necessary to preserve national unity.

There are other indications that Burma has strayed from a path toward democratization. Since the election of the NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi has displayed strong authoritarian tendencies and a willingness to acquiesce to the military’s demands that far exceeds the call of duty in the Burmese political system. She has failed to institute meaningful economic reform or substantive reform to political institutions.

Nor has she been able to muster the political clout necessary to arrange a cease-fire among the nation’s disparate separatist and ethnic movements. Richard Weir from Human Rights Watch believes that violence has actually risen since Aung San Suu Kyi’s election.

While the international community focuses largely (and rightly) on the plight of Rohingya, Weir fears that other groups experiencing violence and oppression — such as the Kachin and Shan in the north — are slipping off the radar. Weir’s on-the-ground observations were recently corroborated by reports from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that note rising violence against the Christian minority Kachin.

Now Aung San Suu Kyi’s denial of U.N. entry should be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Human rights groups and local media have reported a slew of abuses by security forces across Rakhine state: the systemic use of rape as a weapon of war, beatings and killings of civilians, and the widespread looting and destruction of Rohingya homes.

Aung San Suu Kyi faces a difficult political situation. A deep bias against ethnic Rohingya (extending to Muslim believers in general) is rampant among the Burmese majority. If she lets racial divisions foment social discord, she risks provoking a military reaction — perhaps even an attempt by the generals to return to power.

It is clear the NLD would rather ignore the problem until tensions dissipate. On Monday, an NLD spokesperson acknowledged that the ruling party had used the recent international Rakhine state commission, chaired by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, as a “shield” from political criticism.

While Aung San Suu Kyi remains, for many, a powerful symbol of the struggle for democracy, the time has come for stronger international pressure to condemn her moral abstention regarding the abuse of her country’s ethnic minorities.

Burma’s democratic transition is faltering. The Trump administration should respond by shoring up and maintaining democracy programming in Burma. Moreover, it should press the NLD government to begin to implement a path to recognize Rohingya as citizens. Such actions would affirm the U.S. commitment to promote human rights and freedom, not just in Burma but also throughout Southeast Asia.