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If Suu Kyi can offer no hope to the Rohingya, cutting off the cash flow to Myanmar may work

Manjit Bhatia says Aung San Suu Kyi has buried her head in the sand on the issue, when what is needed is fewer platitudes and harsh sanctions from leading powers to make Myanmar’s elite feel the pain

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Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, who tried to cross the Naf River into Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence, are watched by Bangladeshi security officials in Teknaf on December 25. Photo: AFP
Aung San Suu Kyi is a flop, while Myanmar, formerly Burma, lurches towards becoming a failed state. Since her National League for Democracy (NLD) party’s landslide 2015 election win, which propelled her to the specially created post of state counsellor – or de facto head of government – she has talked the talk but can’t seem to walk it.
On the explosive Rohingya crisis, Suu Kyi buries her head in the sand. It’s painfully obvious the Muslim Rohingya continue to be brutalised by Buddhist fundamentalists and terrorised by Myanmese soldiers, while the rest of the world, including the UN, sits on its hands. Right under her nose lies the possible making of a Myanmese slaughterhouse that, if left unchecked, could well become Southeast Asia’s Aleppo.
For all her promise to bring democracy and civility to the country after decades of military dictatorship, Myanmar, a member of Asean, has regressed into ultra-right-wing xenophobic savagery.
Armed troops and police travel in trucks through Maungdaw, Rakhine state, on October 14 last year, five days after armed men carried out raids on posts along the Bangladesh border, killing nine police officers. Rohingya insurgents were blamed for the attacks. Photo: AFP
Armed troops and police travel in trucks through Maungdaw, Rakhine state, on October 14 last year, five days after armed men carried out raids on posts along the Bangladesh border, killing nine police officers. Rohingya insurgents were blamed for the attacks. Photo: AFP

Myanmar’s military killed seven of my children, says Rohingya refugee who fled village

At the UN General Assembly in September, Suu Kyi pledged to uphold minority rights in Myanmar. But it was a pledge without commitment. She mentioned the western Rakhine state, home to the Rohingyas, but refused to call the persecuted group by name.

Watch: Aung San Suu Kyi addresses troubles in Rakhine at the UN

Whether the Rohingya are struggling for “genuine”, ethnically defined official status in Buddhist-majority Rakhine state or they are a “political construction” dating back to Myanmar’s ninth century Arakan state, their relentless mistreatment violates all 21st-century ideas and sensibilities about human values.
In part, Suu Kyi finds herself in a virtual no-man’s land over finding solutions for the Muslim Rohingya. It’s a situation that could well see, as The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote last January, “a beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner presiding over 21st century concentration camps”.
Suu Kyi’s vacillation is partly due to a lack of spine, in spite of her many promises during her long periods of house arrest to return Myanmar to democracy and modern civilisation. Her growing cageyness also reflects the near-absolute control exerted by the country’s military, which ruled from 1962 to 2011.
The charred remnants of a market set on fire at a Rohingya village outside Maungdaw in Rakhine state, on October 27 last year. Photo: Reuters
The charred remnants of a market set on fire at a Rohingya village outside Maungdaw in Rakhine state, on October 27 last year. Photo: Reuters

Nobel laureates slam Suu Kyi over Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis, call for UN intervention

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