PROFILE - Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi: Defender of Rohingya persecution

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – The Myanmar junta has sent to jail for 33 years the country’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who defended the Burmese military’s crimes against the world’s most persecuted minority, the Rohingya.

Suu Kyi, 77, who has already spent 15 years behind bars – mostly under house arrest – during previous junta regimes in the Buddhist-majority nation, saw her political career reaching its zenith when she won Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, which was received by her son Alexander Aris.

Born on June 19, 1945, in Rangoon, now Yangon, Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, a celebrated national hero, and Khin Kyi, a prominent Burmese diplomat.

She was two when her father was assassinated.

After her early education in Burma, she studied in India, where her mother was serving as Myanmar’s ambassador, and later flew to the UK to attain higher education at Oxford University.

There she met and married Michael Aris with whom she has two sons. Aris died in 1999 in London.

In the late 1980s, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to look after her mother when a mass uprising against military rule resulted in killings.

This was the time when she rose to become a face of a “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights” in Myanmar which is currently facing a case of the genocide of Rohingya at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

- ‘Icon of human rights’

Her support for the "cause of democracy and human rights" brought her fame, awards, and challenges. She was arrested in 1989 and spent the next 15 years in and out of prison.

She co-founded National League for Democracy (NLD) in 1988 and won a majority in the 1990 parliamentary elections. The junta ignored the results and later annulled the results in 2010.

During the tumultuous years which saw Suu Kyi in and out of prison, Myanmar also witnessed clashes between the NLD and pro-government demonstrators in 2003.

She was again put under house arrest. Many a time, conditions of her arrest included being incommunicado.

After garnering international support, a UN body in 2009 declared her detention illegal under Myanmar’s own law. The same year she was charged with breaching the terms of house arrest.

In 2010, under a new law, anyone married to a foreigner was disallowed to run for public office which the NLD refused to accept and the party was disbanded by the junta.

- ‘Freedoms restored’

However, since 2011, Suu Kyi saw freedom returning to her as she resumed open political engagements besides holding meetings with foreign officials including the then-Thailand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This period also saw election rules relaxed and the NLD officially reinstated.

Suu Kyi won April 1, 2012 elections on a seat in Yangon. She made her first foreign trip in May that year, to Thailand, the first time since 1988. She also visited China in 2015.

With political and election fever picking up, the NLD won the November 2015 elections but Suu Kyi could not become president as election laws placed some bars on those with foreign spouses or offspring.

With a national government, the NLD picked her confidant Htin Kyaw for the president’s post and won through voting by lawmakers.

Suu Kyi was initially allotted four ministerial portfolios – energy, education, foreign, and a minister in the president’s office.

Later with a law passed by the legislature and signed by Kyaw, Suu Kyi was named as State Counselor – a post similar to that of prime minister with sweeping powers.

- ‘Silence on Rohingya persecution, end of NLD regime’

It was under her watch that more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly women, and children, fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community in August 2017, pushing the number of persecuted Rohingya people in Bangladesh above 1.2 million.

More than 34,000 Rohingya were also thrown into fires, while over 114,000 others were beaten.

Some 18,000 Rohingya women and girls were raped by Myanmar’s army and police and over 115,000 Rohingya homes were burned down and 113,000 others were vandalized.

Suu Kyi maintained silence.

St Hugh’s College at Oxford, where she studied, has since removed her portrait from public display while the Oxford City Council stripped the "Freedom of Oxford" award "because of her failure to condemn the violence and persecution against Rohingya Muslims in Burma."

Later, in December 2019, the Nobel laureate Suu Kyi defended her country against accusations of the Rohingya genocide at the top UN court.

Her defense of the questionable actions by Burmese military, locally known as Tatmadaw, at the ICJ in The Hague against the case filed by Gambia, a small West African country, had drawn criticism and condemnation.

The case is still going on and Myanmar has been directed to stop the genocide of the Rohingya after a UN fact-finding mission found that "the gravest crimes under international law" had been committed in Myanmar. The UN team had called for genocide trials.

The US also designated the persecution of Rohingya as genocide and has imposed severe sanctions on Myanmar army chief Min Aung Hlaing and three other senior commanders over the killing of Rohingya members.

Suu Kyi seemingly acknowledged the "suffering" of the Rohingya minority but said because of the "armed conflict, the situation in Rakhine state was complex."

The former rights defender avoided using "Rohingya" by name.

"If war crimes have been committed, they will be prosecuted within our military justice system Myanmar State Counsellor," she told the ICJ.

Back home, Suu Kyi's government was deposed after her party, the NLD, won the national elections in November 2020.

Burmese military launched a coup in Feb. 2021 which was met with widespread civic unrest as people denounced her removal and military rule. The junta repressed protests violently, despite UN warnings that the country had descended into civil war.

The UN rights office has said at least 2,316 people, including at least 188 children, have been killed in Myanmar since the military seized power.

Different charges against Suu Kyi include alleged election fraud, breaching COVID-19 public safety rules, importing walkie-talkies, and violating the official secrets act.

On Friday, the junta court pronounced the final verdict of seven more years in prison, concluding the 15th conviction of the Burmese leader.