{"id":173288,"date":"2020-11-23T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=173288"},"modified":"2020-11-20T09:15:44","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T09:15:44","slug":"how-a-nobel-peace-laureate-human-rights-angel-lost-her-halo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/11\/how-a-nobel-peace-laureate-human-rights-angel-lost-her-halo\/","title":{"rendered":"How a [Nobel Peace Laureate] Human Rights Angel Lost Her Halo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ten years after she left house arrest and vowed to fight for justice, Myanmar\u2019s civilian leader has instead become a jailer of critics and an apologist for the slaughter of minorities.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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14 Nov 2020 – <\/em>When [Nobel Peace Laureate] Daw Aung San Suu Kyi emerged<\/a> from years of house arrest a decade ago, having never used a smartphone or Facebook, she held court in the office of her banned political party, the smell of damp emanating from the human rights reports piled on the floor.<\/p>\n

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Armed with nothing more than a collection of international awards, she wore fresh flowers in her hair, sat with impeccable posture and promised the world two things: she would ensure that Myanmar\u2019s political prisoners would go free and she would end the ethnic strife that has kept the country\u2019s borderlands at war for seven decades.<\/p>\n

But the two pledges have gone unfulfilled, and the world\u2019s most shimmering icon of democracy has lost her luster. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 75, has turned into an apologist for the very generals who once locked her up, downplaying their murderous campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Her strongest critics accuse her, as a member of the Bamar ethnic majority, of racism and an unwillingness to fight for the human rights of all people in Myanmar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Yet even as Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has squandered the moral authority that came with her Nobel Peace Prize, her popularity at home has endured. This week, her political party, the National League for Democracy, won yet another landslide in general elections<\/a>, setting up five more years in which she will share power with the military that ruled Myanmar for nearly 50 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n