Suu Kyi now benefits from Asean silence
Myanmar leader goes from slamming non-interference policy to banking on it
YANGON: When Aung San Suu Kyi led the fight for democracy against Myanmar’s despotic military rulers two decades ago, she bristled at the collective reluctance of South-East Asian governments to intervene in her nation’s plight.
In a newspaper editorial published in 1999, the former opposition leader slammed the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations, saying its “policy of non-interference is just an excuse for not helping”.
“In this day and age,” she wrote in an editorial in Thailand’s The Nation newspaper on July 13 of that year, “you cannot avoid interference in the matters of other countries.”
Today, Suu Kyi leads Myanmar. And when she attends the Asean summit in Manila on Monday, she is likely to be counting on the bloc to keep silent while her government engages in a crackdown on Rohingya Muslims to force them to leave the Buddhist-majority country.
It is unclear whether the crisis will be on Asean’s official agenda, although Malaysia and Indonesia will likely bring it up on the meeting’s sidelines.
Bangladesh, where over 600,000 Rohingya have arrived since late August, is not part of Asean.
But little is expected to be done. “Asean summits are not designed to actually construct policy respons- es to major human rights issues that affect the whole region,” said David Mathieson, a former human rights researcher who is now an independent analyst based in Myanmar.
“Right now, Suu Kyi’s government is benefiting from Asean’s culture of inaction.”
The crisis began on Aug 25 after Rohingya insurgents attacked several Myanmar police posts in northern Rakhine state.
Security forces responded with brutal “clearance operations” that human rights groups say killed hundreds of people and left hundreds of Rohingya villages burned to the ground.
Survivors have described arson, rape and shootings by Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist mobs for the purpose of forcing the Rohingya to leave.
Myanmar has long denied them citizenship and most people insist the Rohingya are illegal immigrants, even though they have lived in Myanmar for generations.
Suu Kyi was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”, in the words of the Nobel committee, but has been reluctant to defend the Rohingya.
In a September speech, Suu Kyi asked for patience from the international community and suggested the refugees were partly responsi- ble for the crisis.
She also tried to play down the gravity of the exodus, saying that more than half of the Rohingya villages in Myanmar had not been destroyed.
Though Suu Kyi has been the de facto head of Myanmar’s civilian government since her party swept elections in 2015, she is limited in her control of the country by a constitution written by the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades.
The military is in charge of the operations in northern Rakhine and ending them is not up to Suu Kyi. Still, her government has staunchly defended the army’s actions.
When the UN Security Council last week called for Myanmar to “end the excessive military force and intercommunal violence that had devastated the Rohingya community”, Suu Kyi’s office responded that it regretted the council’s statement.
In an apparent reference to China, which has backed Myanmar, the government praised Security Council members who “upheld the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries”.
Non-interference has long been a bedrock of Asean, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Writing in The Nation in 1999, Suu Kyi said when Asean invokes the principle of non-interference, it does so “not with a clear conscience”.
“They are afraid that there may be some aspects of their countries that might invite criticism,” she said.
“Our position is that if they have problems that invite legitimate criticism, let there be criticism. If not, they have nothing to fear.” — AP