Suu Kyi Insists the World is Wrong About Rohingya Muslims

Protesters hold placards critical of Aung San Suu Kyi at a rally in Jakarta this week. 

Burma’s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has yet again denied reports by the world’s media
outfits and world leaders that the Burmese government with assistance from local
Buddhists is carrying out ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state of Burma. She has said the numerous photographs that have appeared on social, electronic and print media showing carnage against the Rohingya Muslims are all fake. 

Today, 11th December 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to defend the actions of her government against the Rohingya Muslims.

Suu Kyi in 2017 put up a similar defense for her country, she emphasized on pictures posted on tweeter by Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister, Başbakan Yardımcıları, saying, “That kind of fake information … was simply the tip of a huge iceberg of misinformation calculated to create a lot of problems between different communities and with the aim of promoting the interest of the terrorists”, Suu Kyi posted on FaceBook.  

This came after reports confirmed that an estimated 146,000 (now 700,000) Rohingya Muslims 80% of them reported to be women and children have fled Burma to Bangladesh following a heavy crackdown on them by the Burmese government forces. UN sources said at the time that the crackdown had led to the death of at least 1,000 Rohingya Muslim civilians. 

Asked if the current crackdown by the Burmese forces amounted to ethnic cleansing on Tuesday 5th September 2017, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres said, “We are facing a risk, I hope we don’t get there.” 

The Burmese government is making moves to block any UN Security Council resolutions that could place sanctions on Burma for allowing the violence to continue unabated. The current violence against the Rohingya Muslims started on August 25th, 2017 when militants said to be of Rohingya origin attacked Burmese security posts killing 12 policemen, a soldier, and a migration officer. 

Myanmar National Security Adviser Thaung Tun told a press conference in Naypyitaw that the country was lobbying China and Russia, both permanent members of the Security Council, to block any potential UN resolution on the crisis. “We are negotiating with some friendly countries not to take it to the Security Council, China is our friend and we have a similar friendly relationship with Russia so it will not be possible for that issue to go forward.” 

As fears grow that the Bangladeshi government will send the refugees back to Burma as it has done numerous times in the past, sources revealed that Burma has placed land mines around the Burma-Pakistan border to prevent the Rohingya refugees from returning to Burma, an allegation Burma denies claiming the mines have been there since the 1990s. 

Human Rights Watch revealed that 17 Rohingya villages had been burned by local Buddhists and Burmese forces and 15,000 Rohingya refugees were streaming into Bangladesh on a daily bases for the past week. The rights group also confirmed that there were around 400,000 Rohingya Muslims trapped in conflict zones in northern Rakhine. 

In December 2017, two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were arrested while investigating the Inn Din massacre of Rohingyas carried out by Burmese soldiers. 

A police officer testified that he was ordered by superiors to frame and arrest the journalists; he was later jailed and his family evicted from their home in the police camp. In September 2018, the judge declared the journalists guilty and to be jailed for seven years.

In June 2018, Suu Kyi publicly commented that the journalists were not arrested for covering the Rakhine issue, but because they had broken Myanmar's Official Secrets Act. Aung San Suu Kyi's presumption of their guilt were criticized by rights groups for potentially influencing the verdict. American diplomat Bill Richardson said that he had privately discussed the arrest with Suu Kyi, and he alleged that Aung San Suu Kyi was infuriated and called the journalists "traitors". 

Observers believed Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence or indifference to the plight of the Rohingyas was political, but a series of invents are pointing to the fact that the 74-year-old like most Burmese Buddhists might have a special hatred towards Muslims. 

Suu Kyi told reporters after receiving a ‘peace’ award in 2012 that she did not know if the Rohingya Muslims could be called Burmese citizens. According to Suu Kyi’s biographer, Peter Popham, after an interview with BBC correspondent, Mishal Husain, Suu Kyi expressed anger at being interviewed by a Muslim.  

The Burmese government insists that the Rohingya Muslims are Migrants to Burma but historical facts show that the Rohingya have been living in Arakan (Rohingya word for Rakhine) since The 8th century and only became part of Burma when Arakan was annexed by Burmese forces in 1785. An online petition calling for the revoking of Suu Kyi's Nobel Prize gained over 400,000 signatures across the globe.