{"id":123769,"date":"2018-12-10T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=123769"},"modified":"2018-12-07T13:34:34","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T13:34:34","slug":"dont-let-nobel-peace-laureate-aung-san-suu-kyi-off-the-hook-for-her-role-in-the-myanmar-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/12\/dont-let-nobel-peace-laureate-aung-san-suu-kyi-off-the-hook-for-her-role-in-the-myanmar-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Let [Nobel Peace Laureate] Aung San Suu Kyi Off the Hook for Her Role in the Myanmar Genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, a prominent Buddhist teacher defended Aung San Suu Kyi, the Buddhist Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Myanmar civilian leader, against criticism that she is party to genocide. Khin Mai Aung explains why that defense doesn\u2019t hold up.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Aung San Suu Kyi in 2013. Photo by Shawn Landersz on Flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n

6 Dec 2018 – <\/em>Recently, respected Bhutanese lama Dzongzar Khyentse Rinpoche posted an open letter<\/a> on Facebook downplaying Myanmar\u2019s brutal Rohingya genocide and expressing support for the country\u2019s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The politician has come under fire in recent years for her tacit support of the ongoing genocide in her country. In his letter, Rinpoche dismisses these criticisms as Western colonialism. By letting Aung San Suu Kyi off the hook for her complicity in Myanmar\u2019s genocide and largely turning a blind eye to the Rohingya\u2019s suffering, Rinpoche implicitly endorses the anti-Rohingya mindset rampant in Myanmar and the Burmese diaspora. Rinpoche\u2019s stunning failure to exhibit the core Buddhist tenet of compassion for the Rohingya\u2019s suffering at the hands of Myanmar\u2019s military is deeply disappointing.<\/p>\n

In his letter, Rinpoche makes valid and resonant points about Western double standards, hypocrisy, and paternalism. Vestiges of colonialism endure for both colonizers and their former subjects, even today. As I\u2019ve written before<\/a>, colonialism is indeed to blame for much of Myanmar\u2019s contemporary troubles. British colonial authorities intentionally stoked tensions between its Bamar Buddhist majority and ethnic minorities through a strategy of \u201cdivide and rule<\/a>,\u201d sowing seeds of resentment between the Bamar and minorities like the Rohingya. Rinpoche further reminds us that atrocities committed by Western powers \u2014 before, during, and after colonialism \u2014 are frequently downplayed and conveniently forgotten. He\u2019s right that abuses committed by Western powers, like the United States pummelling Laos with an unprecedented number of bombs<\/a> during the Vietnam war, are not as widely remembered as they should be. On a more mundane level, he is also correct that Westerners sometimes co-opt, decontextualize, and exoticize Eastern traditions and practices (like yoga and meditation) \u2014 robbing them of their core meaning and essence.<\/p>\n

Rinpoche says that criticism of Suu Kyi is \u201ca sign of the insidious colonialism that continues to strangle Asia and the world.\u201d He\u2019s wrong.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But his defense of Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s heartbreaking complicity in the Rohingya genocide based on these legitimate concerns is where Rinpoche swerves off track. Rinpoche says that criticism of Suu Kyi is \u201ca sign of the insidious colonialism that continues to strangle Asia and the world.\u201d He\u2019s wrong. The global outcry<\/a> over Rohingya persecution \u2014 and Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s failure to denounce it \u2014 is not the paternalism of the West imposing its values on Myanmar. Rather, it is a valid response to the Burmese military\u2019s bloody subjugation of a profoundly disempowered minority (using tactics the military has also deployed<\/a> against other ethnic and religious minorities for decades), and the unwillingness of the country\u2019s elected civilian leadership to even question this brutality.<\/p>\n

Rinpoche sets up an East-versus-West dichotomy and cloaks his defense of Aung San Suu Kyi in the righteous language of anti-colonialism, writing \u201cwe are expected to kowtow to western morality\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s time to restore the dignity of our own great eastern wisdom traditions and legacies.\u201d In doing so, Rinpoche unwittingly lends support for Myanmar\u2019s alternative narrative of its mistreatment of the Rohingya. This framing opens the door for Burmese apologists \u2014 including but not limited to political leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi \u2014 to cast abuse of the Rohingya as part of Myanmar\u2019s noble effort to preserve its ethnic and religious identity in the face of Western oppression. In this narrative, Myanmar is merely casting off the yoke of colonial rule by purging the country of \u201cBengali\u201d foreigners brought into the country by British overseers \u2014 not exterminating and expelling a vulnerable and powerless minority group.<\/p>\n

The contention that the Rohingya are not native to Myanmar is unfortunately reinforced by Rinpoche\u2019s allegation that the British brought \u201cmost\u201d Rohingya to Burma during the colonial period as cheap labor to work in rice paddies. It\u2019s true that many people of South Asian descent were imported<\/a> from the Indian subcontinent into Myanmar by British colonial authorities. But as others have pointed out<\/a> in response to Rinpoche\u2019s letter, both the Muslim Rohingya and my own ancestors, the Buddhist Rakhine (another ethnic minority in Myanmar), coexisted peacefully for centuries on both sides of the Naf River, which now marks the Myanmar\u2013Bangladesh border. Rinpoche overlooks this important fact, capitulating to and reinforcing the Burmese belief that all or most Rohingya are foreigners from Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

It is also not accurate to suggest that Aung San Suu Kyi is being judged according to Western morality, when she herself has spent most of her life campaigning for democracy and free speech. In 2010, she said<\/a>, \u201cThe basis of democratic freedom is freedom of speech.\u201d If that his her belief, why did her political party bar Muslims<\/a> from seeking office in Myanmar\u2019s 2015 elections? And why does she remain silent while journalists are thrown in jail for reporting on the Rohingya genocide? Is it colonialist to call on Aung San Suu Kyi to uphold the very principles which she has spent her life promoting?<\/p>\n

Despite his lengthy excoriation of the West, Rinpoche regretfully omits an obvious and relevant example of Western influence negatively impacting Myanmar. He passionately decries the unfortunate influence of Western society, contending that \u201cWe Asians have been taught to disparage our own noble traditions and instead to treasure western values, literature and music, to chew gum and wear faded jeans, to embrace Facebook and Amazon, and to ape western manners and institutions.\u201d Rinpoche misses the fact that the Burmese military has actively used<\/a> Facebook to spread its propaganda and encourage religious violence. If Rinpoche truly wants Aung San Suu Kyi to cast off the yoke of western colonialism, he should question why she condones the Burmese military\u2019s use of western technology to implement its own version of \u201cdivide and rule\u201d by inflaming ethnic and religious tensions in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

The profound irony of Rinpoche\u2019s statement that \u201cour own holocausts are conveniently forgotten and buried in the dustbin of history\u201d haunts me. Blinded by anger over Western double standards, Rinpoche doesn\u2019t see how his words may help Myanmar bury its own genocide in the \u201cdustbin of history.\u201d His willingness to let Aung San Suu Kyi (and, by extension, the rest of Myanmar\u2019s civilian government) off the hook for failing to advocate for the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in Myanmar is dismaying. What the international Buddhist community needs is moral and ethical leadership from prominent religious leaders like Rinpoche, and not excuses for politicians unable or unwilling to stand up for the vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Rinpoche is absolutely right that the Western world can be self-righteous and judgmental toward non-Westerners, and that non-Westerners, in turn, are sometimes unduly deferential to the West. But by viewing foreign criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi only through this prism, he obscures the larger truth of human rights abuses in Myanmar. And, tragically, he overlooks the fact that Myanmar\u2019s civilian leadership has abandoned the core Buddhist belief in each person\u2019s innate human dignity \u2014 including that of the Rohingya.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

The Nobel Peace Prize 1991 was awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi <\/a>“for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 lionsroar.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Dec 2018 – Last week, a prominent Buddhist teacher defended Aung San Suu Kyi, the Buddhist Nobel Peace Prize laureate, against criticism that she is party to genocide. Why that defense doesn\u2019t hold up. Suu Kyi lived in Bhutan where her late husband was working as the English tutor for the Bhutanese royal family. This lama moves in that ruling class circle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":123770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nobel-laureates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}