Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday saw the fulfillment of the democratic dream for which she had labored so hard and at such personal cost. Her close political ally, Htin Kyaw, was sworn in to the presidential role from which Suu Kyi herself is barred under the constitution written by the outgoing military.
To judge by the international media coverage of the ceremony, there was hardly a dry eye in the house. “The Lady” as she is affectionately known had triumphed. Burma is back on the path toward stability and justice. Or is it?
It had been widely assumed that Suu Kyi’s failure to tackle the marginalization of Burmese Muslims, particularly the persecuted Rohingya minority, was due to her reluctance to provoke the military junta. Thus the Nobel Peace Laureate could make a few comforting noises about problems that would need to be addressed in due course and her fans around the world were satisfied. To judge from yesterday’s wall-to-wall media coverage, they have not changed their minds.
Clearly they do not know about or choose to ignore an interview that Suu Kyi gave in 2013 to a respected BBC reporter and radio anchor Mishal Husain. Toward the end of what had been a relaxed and friendly meeting which the Lady appeared to be enjoying, Husain brought up the issue of Muslim minority rights. Suu Kyi sought to bat the question away with an anodyne response but Husain persisted with another question. A clear look of annoyance overtook the Lady’s normally seraphic features.
And it got worse. At the end of what had suddenly become a tense encounter, Suu Kyi was heard to complain to an aide: “No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim”. As if this should have made the slightest difference to a woman who has portrayed herself as the champion of the rights of all Burmese. That remark, overheard by members of the BBC crew with Husain, surely exposes, at the very least, a knee-jerk racist response. What she said has been reported in a newly published book and in a number of newspapers. Yet there has been no attempt by Suu Kyi or her people to deny the story. Still less has any sort of apology been offered or an explanation - such as the Lady had had a long and hard day and was not on her best form.
To have ignored the incident altogether would on the face of it have been the worst course of action. And yet given the unalloyed enthusiasm for yesterday’s presidential inauguration by the world's media, she has got away with the telling slip. But this is not true of the Muslim world. Nor is it likely to be true of human rights organizations, including from the UN, who have listed the atrocities and persecution of the Rohingya.
Suu Kyi now has a lot to prove. She at last has power in Burma. The military still hold the defense and interior ministries, there is a military-appointed deputy president and allocated parliamentary seats for the generals. But these provisions cannot be used as an excuse for further inaction over the plight of the country’s Muslims. The time for fine words has gone. Now is the time for action. This should include the granting of full citizenship to the Rohingya and the prosecution of the bigoted Buddhist monks who led the hate-filled crimes against this oppressed minority.
