Opinion | Aung San Suu Kyi: from Myanmar’s icon of democracy to collaborator in the Rohingya Muslim genocide
David I. Steinberg says Aung San Suu Kyi may care more about her country than her international reputation, but her dismissal of atrocities against the Rohingya may haunt Myanmar in the future
This from the Nobel laureate who has been held up in the Western world as the icon of democracy as she struggled against a military regime while under house arrest for some 15 years.
It is true, as she has said, that she did not want to be regarded as a democratic icon, but rather as a politician trying to move her country along an unknown path to a form of democratic state. But she has basked in this positive international spotlight and received numerous international awards for her courage and commitment to democracy.
Claiming they were properly convicted under a colonial-era official secrets act, she has showed that all her previous hortatory exhortations to adhere to the “rule of law” were essentially meaningless. One official indicated that the two reporters were set up by the military through planted material. The courts are not independent.