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A Politician, Not an Icon: Aung San Suu Kyi’s Silence on Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya
Ronan Lee* — School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Australia, (Received 18 March 2014; accepted 31 March 2014)
In Myanmar (also known as Burma), the Rohingya are a persecuted Muslim minority living mainly in northern Rakhine State. Aung San Suu Kyi, the iconic leader of Myanmar’s opposition party the National League for Democracy (NLD), is championed as the voice of the people. However, on the matter of the Rohingya’s persecution she has been notably silent. This article examines the possible reasons for Suu Kyi’s silence and argues that Buddhist–Muslim political relations in Myanmar are central to understanding the reasons behind Suu Kyi’s position on the Rohingya. It is suggested that various factors, including the history of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the NLD’s attitude towards the Rohingya, Suu Kyi’s sense of obligation to her father’s political legacy, and Suu Kyi’s views on ethnicity, are creating a political environment in which Suu Kyi is presented with pragmatic political reasons for staying silent. Given Suu Kyi has the potential to become a future national leader, an understanding of her behaviours towards a sizeable persecuted Muslim minority is important. This is particularly the case when consideration is given to the contemporary pressures on Muslims to embrace radical politics and the implications this could have for Myanmar and the region.
In Myanmar (also known as Burma),1 the Rohingya are a persecuted Muslim minority living mainly in northern Rakhine State adjacent to Bangladesh (Green 2013; Oberoi 2006). In recent times, they have attracted increased international notice and media attention as deteriorating relations between Myanmar’s Buddhist majority and the country’s Muslim population flared into widespread violent inter-communal riots during 2012 (Parnini 2013). Human rights organizations estimate that inter-communal violence in mid-2012 displaced around 125,000 mainly Muslim people in Rakhine State (HRW 2013), and saw entire city blocks of the state capital Sittwe laid waste (HRW 2012).
Aung San Suu Kyi, the iconic leader of Myanmar’s opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), has been championed as the voice of the people and a “symbol of popular opposition to the government” (Charney 2009, 177) from the time she emerged as a political actor during the 1988 anti-government uprising. In 1991, Suu Kyi, the “personification of democratic ideals,” was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (Steinberg 2010, 95). However, on the matter of the Rohingya’s situation Suu Kyi has been notably silent. This silence is causing significant disquiet within the international human rights community, which was previously strongly supportive of Suu Kyi’s political aspirations (Ingber 2012).
