The real villain in Myanmar
Every tool available — diplomatic, legal, economic — must be employed to apply maximum pressure on Myanmar’s military chief Min Aung Hlaing to stop him from conducting the atrocities on Rohingya
f you haven’t been paying much attention to events in Myanmar recently, you might be shocked or surprised by Aung San Suu Kyi. Yes, her response to the violence in Rakhine state, on the country’s west coast, has been extremely disappointing. No, she shouldn’t be denying that human rights abuses are happening. Yes, she should be speaking out in defence of the Rohingya. No, you can’t take away her Nobel Peace Prize; there is no mechanism for doing so. No one knows for sure why she has taken this attitude towards the Rohingya, so stop asking.
Having got that out of the way, let’s focus on what’s happening to the Rohingya right now, and what can be done about it.
The military in Myanmar, led by commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, has launched a major military operation against Rohingya civilians, using the pretext of hunting down militants who attacked government buildings, including police stations, on August 25. Since the offensive began, almost 400,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh. According to Rohingya sources in exile and on the ground in Myanmar, there are an estimated 100,000 or more who have been internally displaced. Perhaps 5,000 people have been killed.
Horrific human rights violations have been committed — executions, beheadings, people being burned alive in their homes. Even children are being targeted by the military, security forces, armed militias and mobs. It’s not surprising that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussain, described the military attacks against the Rohingya as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
But while the world focuses on Suu Kyi, the man responsible for these horrific abuses doesn’t get mentioned in government statements or the vast majority of media articles. Hlaing is calling the shots. Articles about Suu Kyi are exactly what he wants to see. With more focus on her and none on him, he has more freedom to carry out his ethnic cleansing campaign.
Under Myanmar’s military-drafted constitution, Suu Kyi does not have control over the army. It is independent of her civilian-led government. The army controls the police, security services, prisons, border affairs and most of the civil service, and also appoints 25 per cent of the members of parliament. Because 75 per cent of MPs need to vote in favour of a constitutional change, Min Aung Hlaing effectively has a veto. He leads a second government in Myanmar, one armed with guns.
Hlaing should be well known and treated as a pariah by now. He leads an army with one of the worst human rights records in the world. Even before this latest military offensive, it was under investigation by the UN for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity involving the Rohingya and other ethnic groups in Myanmar. Even after reforms began, Hlaing’s army has been engaged in domestic conflicts, most recently in Kachin State and Shan State, where his soldiers killed civilians.
Hlaing is guilty of ethnic cleansing, he is under investigation for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and he is the biggest obstacle to democratic reform in Myanmar. Nevertheless, not only is he facing no international pressure, he is embraced by the international community.
Red-carpet treatment
Last October, former United States president Barack Obama had lifted most of the US sanctions specifically targeting Myanmar’s military. In Europe, the British government provides the military with training at British taxpayers’ expense. Earlier this year, Hlaing was given red-carpet treatment by the governments of Germany and Austria. They discussed military training and took him on tours of factories supplying military equipment. He was also taken to visit suppliers of military equipment on his visit to Italy last year. The European Union (EU) even invited him to address their prestigious annual meeting of military heads of EU countries. In Asia, Hlaing has completed visits to India and Japan this year, even meeting the prime ministers in those countries. As he began his campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, he met military heads from Vietnam and Thailand to discuss closer military ties.
The international embrace of Hlaing, despite his abysmal record on human rights, must have played a part in his calculation that he could carry out this campaign of ethnic cleansing and get away with it. This must change. It is time his sense of impunity ended. Every tool available — diplomatic, legal, economic — must be employed to apply maximum pressure on Hlaing.
There is no shortage of options for pressuring Min Aung Hlaing to stop his campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. All that is lacking is political will. The lives of the Rohingya and other ethnic groups, and the prospects of a genuinely democratic Myanmar, depend on that will being found. Mark Farmaner is the director of Burma Campaign UK.