Ung San Suu Kyi was once an internationally known democracy fighter, but after the democratization of Burma, as a leader in essence, she not only viewed the genocide of the Rohingya minority with denial and indifference, but also suppressed the media that criticized the government with her dictatorial laws.
Ten years of freedom were exchanged for a crumbling international reputation. Now that Wongsan is a prisoner again, the dark days of his detention by the military government seem like yesterday.
After bidding farewell to her husband and son in 1988, she hurriedly returned from the UK to care for her critically ill mother and set up the largest opposition party, the All People’s Alliance, and spent most of the next 20 years under detention or house arrest until she was freed in 2011, just before the military handed over power. During those dark days, Wongsan argued that violence should not be used to solve domestic crises, otherwise she would be in the same boat as the military government. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for being “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless,” but she was unable to receive the prize in person and had to have her two sons receive it on her behalf.
Even when Ung San’s British husband Michael became seriously ill, she gave up the opportunity to visit, care for and see him one last Time because she was worried that he would never return to Myanmar. The couple has met only five times in 10 years.
Chinese Communist Party President Xi Jinping meets with visiting Myanmar State Senior Minister Ung San Suu Kyi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on April 24, 2019. The Chinese Communist Party has always adopted a “two-sided approach” to the Burmese government and military.
When Ung San was restored to freedom, Myanmar was full of hope. On that cold night, the military government removed the barricades that had long separated Ung San from his people. The British newspaper The Guardian wrote at the time, “Supporters in cage kits and sandals ran 400 meters to her front door. One woman ran and cried, shouting her name. They pushed hard against the bamboo fence, singing and shouting, Long live Onsan Suu Kyi!”
In November 2015, the All People’s Alliance swept the election and the following year she became the senior minister of state, the equivalent of the country’s substantive leader. But she also fell from grace and became a genocide apologist. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape massacres by the Tatmadaw, but Wongsan refuses to condemn the military or do anything to stop the murders, sexual assaults and other atrocities, saying “this is the tip of the iceberg of false information,” demanding evidence of persecution and seeking to prosecute journalists under the Government Secrets Act.
When Wongsan appeared before an international tribunal in 2019 to defend the Burmese government’s genocide, there was a huge outcry from human rights groups and pro-democracy advocates who had supported her in the past. Ung San’s arrest now suggests, in part, a return to an authoritarian military regime. The door to a different future has been opened,” writes Burmese historian U Than Myint, “and no one can control where it goes from here, as the religious-ethnic divide continues to deepen and the people are left in limbo.
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