{"id":141411,"date":"2019-08-26T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=141411"},"modified":"2019-09-02T16:05:01","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T15:05:01","slug":"its-time-to-indict-nobel-peace-laureate-aung-san-suu-kyi-for-genocide-against-the-rohingya-in-myanmar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/08\/its-time-to-indict-nobel-peace-laureate-aung-san-suu-kyi-for-genocide-against-the-rohingya-in-myanmar\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Time to Indict [Nobel Peace Laureate] Aung San Suu Kyi for Genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Myanmar\u2019s state counselor Aung San Suu Kyi attends the opening ceremony of the Yangon Innovation Centre in Yangon on July 17, 2019. Photo: Thet Aung\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

24 Aug 2019 – <\/em>Isn\u2019t it time\u00a0Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was indicted for war crimes and genocide at the International Criminal Court?<\/p>\n

This Sunday [25 Aug] marks two years since the Burmese military, the Tatmadaw, arrived in Rakhine state, in western Myanmar, to launch a renewed campaign of terror and violence<\/a> against the country\u2019s long-persecuted<\/a> Rohingya Muslim minority. Unspeakable<\/a> crimes<\/a> were committed by\u00a0Burmese\u00a0troops and vigilantes: Rohingya men hacked to death<\/a>; children burned alive<\/a>; women and girls raped and sexually assaulted<\/a> in their hundreds and thousands. Scores of villages were pillaged and razed to the ground<\/a> as more than 700,000 Rohingya<\/a> were driven from their homes. One cautious estimate put the death toll at more than 10,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two years on, as Rohingya refugees languish in squalid camps<\/a> across the border in Bangladesh, it is difficult to overstate the sheer barbarism they have had to endure. The U.S. State Department has called it \u201cethnic cleansing<\/a>,\u201d with Sam Brownback, the U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom, describing<\/a> the violence against the Rohingya \u201cas bad as or worse than any other I have personally seen \u2014 including as one of the first U.S. officials to visit Darfur in 2004.\u201d In August 2018, a United Nations fact-finding commission accused<\/a> the Burmese military of genocide \u2014 a view endorsed by, among others, experts at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum<\/a> in Washington, D.C., and a unanimous vote by the Canadian parliament<\/a> in Ottawa. The U.N.\u2019s investigators even demanded<\/a> Myanmar\u2019s top military commanders be investigated and prosecuted for the \u201cgravest\u201d crimes against civilians under international law.<\/p>\n

But what about prosecuting Suu Kyi, the one-time darling of the West and hero to liberals<\/a> and conservatives<\/a> alike? When will that be in the cards? For the past two years, the former prisoner of conscience<\/a>-turned-de facto head of state<\/a> has blindly defended<\/a> her country\u2019s lawless military while cynically downplaying<\/a> the extent of their brutal crimes. A long-standing Buddhist nationalist<\/a>, Suu Kyi has also fanned the flames of hatred<\/a> against the besieged Muslim minority in her country, repeatedly engaging in brazenly Islamophobic<\/a> behavior. On a recent visit to Hungary, of all places, she joined with far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban to bemoan<\/a> the \u201ccontinuously growing Muslim populations\u201d in their respective countries.<\/p>\n

She might want to enjoy her trips abroad, and meetings with fellow racist leaders, while she can. In February 2018, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 who was banned from the country<\/a> for criticizing the Suu Kyi government \u2014 was asked<\/a> by British broadcaster Channel 4 News whether a criminal tribunal might one day find Suu Kyi guilty of crimes against humanity and even genocide. \u201cI\u2019m afraid so,\u201d Lee replied, also stating, \u201cShe can\u2019t be not accountable. Complicity is also part of accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Burmese leader\u2019s dwindling band of international defenders includes, shockingly, her fellow 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos Horta<\/a>, and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell<\/a>. They have joined with the Myanmar government to offer a range of bogus arguments as to why she cannot and should not be prosecuted\u00a0 \u2014 or even be held responsible! \u2014 for the ongoing violence and repression in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

First, they point out, Myanmar isn\u2019t a signatory<\/a> to the International Criminal Court<\/a>,\u00a0so the ICC has no jurisdiction. Yet in September 2018, in a stunning move, the\u00a0ICC ruled that it could indeed prosecute Myanmar for crimes against the Rohingya people, accepting, as The Guardian reported<\/a>, \u201ca novel argument that even though the allegedly coercive acts that forced the Rohingya to flee took place in Myanmar, the crime would not have been completed until the refugees entered Bangladesh, which is a party to the Rome statute that governs the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second, say Suu Kyi defenders, as Myanmar\u2019s first civilian leader after 49 years of military rule, she has no control<\/a> over the armed forces. Therefore she cannot be held responsible for their brutal attacks on the Rohingya.<\/p>\n

But this, says Maung Zarni<\/a>, a fellow at the Genocide Documentation Center in Cambodia, \u201cis a complete mischaracterization of Suu Kyi\u2019s role\u201d in those crimes. Zarni, a Burmese Buddhist who knows Suu Kyi personally and was once an ardent supporter of hers, points out that she controls four civilian ministries that have long been involved in repressing the Rohingya \u2014 the information, religious affairs, immigration, and foreign affairs ministries \u2014 not to mention her own high office of state counselor<\/a>. The latter, as I noted<\/a> in April 2017, \u201caccused Rohingya women of fabricating stories of sexual violence and put the words \u2018fake rape\u2019 \u2014 in the form of a banner headline, no less \u2014 on its official website.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is fair, then, to damn Suu Kyi and her civilian officials for dismissing and denying the crimes against the Rohingya, thereby legitimizing and encouraging further violence by the security forces. Or, as the U.N. report<\/a> put it, contributing \u201cto the commission of atrocity crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Zarni says, \u201cThere is no absolution of her responsibility for the official statements, bills, measures \u2026 all designed to deprive Rohingyas of access to education, health service, due process, livelihoods opportunities, factual information about Rohingya history, legal status, past citizenship activities and citizenship.\u201d Suu Kyi, he\u00a0told me bluntly, plays a similar role to that of Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany, \u201cperhaps less blatantly, but no less effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suu Kyi has \u201cwithout a doubt played an important role in the genocide,\u201d agrees Azeem Ibrahim, author of \u201cThe Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar\u2019s Hidden Genocide,\u201d by providing the Burmese generals with \u201ccover at every step.\u201d It was her presence at the top of government, as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning face of Myanmar to the world, which \u201cemboldened and encouraged the military to undertake the final solution,\u201d Ibrahim told me.<\/p>\n

Third, the Suu Kyi apologists argue, any action taken against The Lady, as she is known, would upset the delicate balance of power inside of Myanmar and risk handing back power to the generals, maybe in the form of a military coup. McConnell calls<\/a> Suu Kyi \u201cthe best hope for democratic reform in Burma,\u201d while Ramos and others worry<\/a> about risking a \u201cfragile political transition.\u201d However, as Ibrahim points out, this argument is \u201cpatently false.\u201d The reality, he explains, \u201cis that the military is now in the perfect situation: they have power without accountability. They have [Suu Kyi] taking all the criticism whilst they can get on with the genocide \u2026 and at the same time enrich themselves dramatically. Why would they want to upset that perfect set-up and return to power, inviting international sanctions and once again becoming a pariah state?\u201d<\/p>\n

Zarni is equally scathing. \u201cThis post-military Burma under Suu Kyi\u2019s presumed enlightened rule is a complete fantasy that comes from self-interested diplomats and foreign governments,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

So when will these foreign governments, which claim to care about human rights and make pious declarations of \u201cnever again,\u201d take action to tackle the perpetrators of a modern-day genocide in Myanmar? There have been the mildest of travel bans<\/a> imposed on a handful of Burmese generals but nothing whatsoever imposed against the state counselor herself. Suu Kyi has been stripped of various awards and freedoms from the likes of Amnesty International<\/a> and the cities of Oxford<\/a>, Edinburgh<\/a>, and Paris<\/a>, but do such minor humiliations really amount to justice for the Rohingya victims of \u201cmurder, rape, torture, sexual slavery, persecution and enslavement<\/a>\u201d?<\/p>\n

To be clear: The refusal to sanction Suu Kyi, or consider prosecuting Myanmar\u2019s de facto leader for her role in the Rohingya genocide, two years later, is not just an insult to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees waiting for some sort of accountability in Bangladesh and beyond. It endangers Myanmar\u2019s other minorities, such as the Kachin Christians in the north, who have also been on the receiving end<\/a> of Tatmadaw violence and terror in recent years.<\/p>\n

As Ibrahim warns: \u201cIf you allow one genocide to go unpunished, you are opening the door to many others.\u201d<\/p>\n

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