Aung San Suu Kyi, Politics and Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar

Newspaper columns, television and radio news in the West have given much space and time to the long-standing silence or virtual silence of Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi on Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis as an estimate 400,000 Muslims flee her country into poverty stricken Bangladesh.

She is the leader of the National League for Democracy and the first State Counsellor, a position similar to a Prime Minister.

UN human rights leader, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said the Muslim situation in Myanmar seems like a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing,” Human rights organisations and aid agencies have drawn similar conclusions.

More than 160 Buddhist teachers and community leaders in the USA signed a letter calling on Myanmar’s Buddhist leaders to act to end the crisis.

“We are greatly disturbed by what many in the world see as slander and distortion of the Buddha’s teachings. In the Dhamma there is no justification for hatred and violence,” they wrote.

Eye witness accounts report of military operations in numerous Muslim villages with the military engaged in killing entire families, rape and burning down of villages.

A tiny number of vociferous orthodox religious Buddhist monks, who hold nationalistic beliefs, have further inflamed the situation with their vitriolic attacks in public speeches against the Muslims in northern Rakhine state. Trapped in this area of the country, the Rohingyas (as they are known) have nowhere safe to go.

There seems to be no explanation for Aung San Suu Kyi’s apparent denial of this ongoing tragedy and the persecution of the Myanmar’s Muslims. Last Tuesday, Aung San Suu Kyi said: “Myanmar does not fear international scrutiny. “

Aid agencies, human rights groups and journalists give a completely different report. They say they have little or no access to northern Rakhine.

Devotion to the Gods

Aung San Suu Kyi carries great moral authority among Burmese citizens. She spent 18 years under house arrest due to her determination to stay in Myanmar to support the people  rather than take flight. Such solidarity with  Burmese Buddhists  under military occupation elevated her into the realms of the Gods.

Aung San Suu Kyi gave up much for the people of Myanmar. She did not go back to Oxford, England when her husband was dying from cancer. She did not return to bring up her teenage sons. She stayed loyal to Myanmar.

The Buddhist population of Myanmar have identified with Aung San Suu Kyi and she appears to have identified herself with them. This emotional bond between a God and her devotees will not easily change. The attacks on Aung San Suu Kyi only strengthen the bond.

Sadly, the Gods have their blind spots. A God gradually identifies with the many people who offer their devotion. The God of the people needs sustained loving attention to feel at one with the people and stay in the centre of their hearts. A God and her/his followers become engaged in an intimate relationship. Such a relationship blocks the opportunity for the God to see outside of the relationship. This is the blind spot.

Sadly, the blind spot in this relationship appears to contribute to the suffering of the Rohingya people. In her 30-minute speech, given in English, Aung San Suu Kyi did not even mention the name ‘Rohingya.’ The unspoken can say more than the spoken. The mentionable becomes the unmentionable. There is an unwillingness to give a name to the oppressed group. The God finds herself trapped in the blind force of adulation and in the spell of devotion of millions of Burmese Buddhists.

Western commentators have called on her to return her Nobel Peace Prize, attacked her for becoming ‘just another politician’ and accuse her of selling out to the military who still exercise immense control in Myanmar. The self-righteous Western media simply do not understand the depths of the emotional life and the elevation of a human into a God with all the vulnerabilities for people and the God.

The West media contributed to her elevation into such an unworldly status and now the same media wish to knock her off her pedestal through character assassination.

I met with Aung San at her home in the mid-1990s during the time when she was under house arrest. I brought with me some documents for her from an organisation of Burmese exiles and took out of the country some letters to post for her.  She is a sincere, dedicated Burmese Buddhist. Her life for the past 30 years has shaped itself around the wishes of the majority group in Myanmar. She has shown little interest in Myanmar’s minorities.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a strong figure. I doubt if the Western media will make her mind budge from her present views and beliefs.

History of Muslims in Burma/Myanmar

During the British occupation of Burma between 1824-1948, the occupiers brought in Muslims from neighbouring regions as cheap/slave labour to build railroads, roads, bridges, boats, buildings and cut down teak forests as the British expanded their control over the country.

Many of the families of the Muslim community date back more than 150 years. Neither the British nor successive Burmese governments gave full recognition to Muslims as equal citizens of the state. During the early 1980s, the military regime cancelled any recognition of Muslims as Burmese. The Muslims have remained a stateless community. They have been denied access to the benefits of citizenship including many public services. They have not found it easy to travel within Burma.

The government has denied the existence of any ethnic group named ‘Rohingya.’ Instead, the regime referred to them as illegal ‘Bengali’ immigrants. They have reduced opportunity for economic inter-action with the rest of Myanmar, find it harder and harder to get access to social services, health and education. Muslim seem effectively segregated from the rest of Myanmar.

Tensions have been growing for years between Burmese citizens and stateless citizens in Myanmar, including other non-Buddhist communities in the far north of Myanmar. Thousands live in camps on the Myanmar/Thai border. I secretly visited a decade ago one of the refugee camps where the people remain trapped. They depend on the generosity of small aid agencies for their survival.

At times, some of the Rohingya people have called for their land in north Rakhine state to become an independent state, which infuriated the government and brought about more retaliatory measures. Some Muslims there became militant attacking and killing Burmese soldiers and police. Year by year, the government and military authorities make life harder for the Muslim community. They used the media to persuade the people to despise Muslims. The authorities adopted the maxim of the British colonialists. Divide and Rule. The policy continues elsewhere.

In the late 1980s, the dark shadows of Western civilisation shifted from Communism to Islam. With the death and destruction of villages, we now witness the flight of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Western wars and civil wars in Arab nations.  In the past generation, the USA and NATO countries have waged war on 14 Muslim countries through invasion, bombings, drone attacks and assassination squads.

The Muslims of Myanmar also pay the price for anti-Muslim propaganda. Governments and media whip up Islamophobia to dehumanise the people to enable wars on Muslims to take place.

For 50 years, the military in Myanmar had complete control over its Burmese citizens. Every family had a soldier. There were paid informers in every village, town and city. Informers simply went to the local police and gave names of those who criticised the regime. The police then gave the informer money. Some informers named people they did not like.

Burmese citizens were not allowed to speak to foreigners. One brave mother in the capital told me her son watched a demonstration. The police arrested him even though he had no connection with the demonstrators. The judge asked the teenager if he supported the demo. He said ‘No.’

The judge told him: “If you said ‘Yes’, I would give you 10 years imprisonment. You said ‘No,’ so I will give you 15 years in jail. You were standing close to the demonstrators. You showed you supported them.” It is hard to convey the anguish of the mother.

The Consequences of Oppression

The West has little understanding of historical psychology, the consequences of actions going back generations and ways to heal conflict between majorities and minorities. Aung San Suu Kyi is not the issue. The plight of the Muslim matters.

History keeps repeating itself. The military oppressed the people. The Burmese Buddhists returned to some degree of ‘normalcy’ with elections. For decades, Burmese Buddhists absorbed the oppressive tendencies of the regime. When that oppression  subsided, the people of Myanmar then had to release their dark shadow. The government, military and millions of citizens vented their shadows upon the Rohingya Muslims.

The same situation repeats elsewhere.  The powerful, militarised Western nations project their dark shadows upon the Muslim world. Israel’ s government has its dark shadow showing itself as an apartheid state, plus the Occupation, with Arabs/Palestinians as second-class citizens. Certain Muslim nations, such as Turkey, cast their dark shadow over the Kurdish minority while civil wars takes place between Muslim sects. Governments and military can inflict suffering and humiliate the minorities on a world-wide basis.

The Burmese authorities simple display the same patterns as the leaders of the USA, NATO, Israel and other countries. Simply stated: Us First. Muslims Second.

Buddhists have an international reputation for non-violence, tolerance, mindfulness, kindness and wisdom. Some brave Buddhist monks and Buddhist leaders in Myanmar call upon their government to show compassion to the Muslim communities and change their current policies.

There are Buddhists in Myanmar, the rest of Asia and elsewhere, who endeavour to explain that the pain inflicted on Muslims in Myanmar does not come from a Buddhist – Muslim divide.

It seems highly unlikely the Myanmar conflict stands devoid of religious beliefs. This humanitarian crisis in Myanmar surely has religious undertones. It is surely better to acknowledge this real possibility than deny the possibility religious dimensions contribute to the dark shadows. E.g. Do Buddhists consider themselves superior to Muslims?

Change can come through UN intervention, campaigns of Buddhist organisations worldwide, diplomacy, massive aid for the Muslim community in Bangladesh and Myanmar, aid for the poor Myanmar Buddhist communities, support for Buddhists in Myanmar who feel deep concern for the Muslim community, conflict resolution, an arms embargo, freezing of foreign accounts of military/political leaders and much more.

The West needs to adopt the same approach to the Muslim world. The West’s treatment of Muslims bears similar parallels as to what is happening in Myanmar.

Aung San Suu Kyi is not the issue. She is the outcome of her circumstances.  The issue is the resolution of suffering.

MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE IN PEACE

MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE IN HARMONY

MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE IN PEACE AND HARMONY