An explanation for when there is no excuse
Perhaps no Nobel laureate has ever soared so high only to fall so far.
First idealized, now demonized, Aung San Suu Kyi has defied expectations all her life. Mostly because people didn’t know who they were dealing with.
Fifteen years ago I wrote one of those glowing articles about her determined opposition to Burma’s military regime, interviewing her just days after she emerged from house arrest, still under the watchful eyes of the secret police.
All these years later, I’m writing an epilogue about her role as an apologist for the regime that once imprisoned her and now persecutes the minority Muslim Rohingya.
In her latest role reversal, she is defending the indefensible. But it is not so inexplicable.
Don’t fault Suu Kyi alone for her country’s sins. Blame Buddhist fundamentalism, which, like all forms of religious fundamentalism, has a way of turning heaven and earth upside down.
Consider Sri Lanka, another putative paradise whose Buddhist majority looked down on religious minorities (Tamil Hindus, as well as Muslims), then suppressed all opposition with widespread human rights abuses. Just as we glorified Suu Kyi, we risk idealizing Buddhism and Buddhist-majority countries, which are as capable of intolerance as any other polity that views politics through the prism of religion and fundamentalism — be it Christian, Jewish or Islamic.
Today the world insists on taking Suu Kyi’s betrayal personally, rather than viewing it politically and religiously. By that standard, it’s fair to say there were early clues that she had a tin ear, yet the public wouldn’t hear of it at the time.
Looking back at the profile I wrote on her in 2002, there are the usual references to her rank in the pantheon of fabled independence leaders, from Gandhi to Mandela. But there was also a gentle warning about her all-too-human shortcomings as a political actor.
I noted Suu Kyi had been criticized for an “unyielding posture in the past. Many ambassadors had previously faulted her for lacking the political savvy to be flexible with the military, given that she held so few bargaining chips.”
One local diplomat told me, “Her rigidity has been counterproductive — that’s what got her locked up.” My source noted that Suu Kyi was still clinging to 1990 election results that were stale-dated, because “no government in the world has a 12-year mandate.”
For our 2002 interview, inside the dilapidated headquarters of her embattled political party, Suu Kyi walked up to her second-floor office with her hair pulled back in her trademark garland of colourful flowers before holding forth.
“You could say we are battle-hardened,” she proclaimed defiantly in her precise British accent, not betraying an ounce of self pity despite years of confinement.
Suu Kyi had a thick skin then, as she presumably does now. State propaganda organs had long attacked her as a whore and a witch, a maggot and an ogress, a stooge and a demon with fangs.
Despite the invective, Suu Kyi insisted she was ready to talk about a political solution. Yet I remember being struck by her formality, bordering on rigidity, as she sat with her arms crossed protectively across her chest, insisting on the need for a travel boycott of Burma despite the benefits of opening a closed country to foreign tourists.
She was an accidental politician, returning from abroad to visit her dying mother in 1988, then taking the microphone at political rallies and winning the 1990 election. The military nullified the results, confining her for 15 years until finally acquiescing to elections with a power-sharing arrangement that confined her to the role of “state counsellor” in 2015.
In her current position, Suu Kyi is as much a prisoner of her political situation as when she languished under military-imposed house arrest. Every politician is circumscribed by circumstances, hemmed in by the very people they try to lead without getting too far out in front of them. But a principled leader knows how far to bend and which human rights to defend.
Suu Kyi has never been adept at finding that balance personally, nor has the rest of her country, which has a long history of inter-ethnic strife. The same holds true for the rest of the world.
That’s no excuse for inaction in the face of possible genocide. Merely an explanation for Suu Kyi’s sudden fall from grace as she struggles to avoid falling from power. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn