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Karim Raslan

Is she Cersei Lannister: cold, cynical and deadly? Or Sansa Stark: noble, long-suffering and genuine?
Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi – the general’s daughter presiding over a desperately fragile state – has been transformed from being the military’s nemesis into its leading apologist or, worse yet, its enabler.
As the proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gear up and Myanmar again comes under global scrutiny, many have asked how she could have become so reviled?
She has allowed the darkest forces in her nation to wreak violence against the long oppressed Muslim Rohingya minority, whom she refuses to acknowledge.
Suu Kyi: it’s ‘misleading’ to label Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya as genocide
More than 730,000 Rohingya are believed to have fled to Bangladesh since violence against them broke out in the Rakhine state in August 2017. That’s why Suu Kyi is at The Hague, defending her government against charges of genocide.
During the same period, an investigation into the brutal murder of 10 Rohingya men and their subsequent mass burial led to the detention of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from December 2017 to May 2019, although the pair eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting.
Still, the parallels between Cersei and Suu Kyi are hard to deny. Both come across as stoic, impenetrable and have succeeded in a field dominated by men. Once in power – both would do anything to keep hold of it.
Unlike Cersei, Suu Kyi remains popular among her own people, if the rallies held in support of her in the lead-up to the ICJ proceedings are any indication.


As one tea shop owner from the Botahtung township said: “I stand with Aung San Suu Kyi. She is a good leader and works hard for the country. She is taking responsibility as a leader by facing the ICJ court.”
It’s unlikely the ICJ – even if it rules against Myanmar – would be able to stop the violence against the Rohingya. For one thing, there’s nothing to enforce its rulings. And the roots of the Buddhist-Muslim divide in Myanmar run deep.
Has Suu Kyi found common ground with Orban over Islam?
Thant-Myint U, author and historian, attempts to explain the roots of the violence in his latest book, The Hidden History of Burma. For Thant, Myanmar’s tangled ethnic history predates the colonial era. Although tensions between Muslims and Buddhists had long existed, the British imposed a racial hierarchy that reduced the Burmese to passive onlookers as millions of migrants from India and China flooded into the then booming economy, fuelled by the exports of teak, oil and rubies. Successive governments since independence failed to heal the nation’s divide.

Thant does not seem to have any solutions for the poisonous identity politics tearing his homeland apart. Rather, the only policy prescriptions he offers are the need to address the anomalies of capitalism and the looming prospect of climate change, which presents an existential challenge to Myanmar.
None of this is intrinsically wrong and Thant is astute to highlight the environmental angle, which often gets lost in Southeast Asian policymaking.
Suu Kyi seeks foreign investment in Rakhine despite violence
But when confronted by the devastating stories of Rohingya being murdered, raped, driven from their homes and starved, only one question really matters: can they ever return to Rakhine state?
Sadek Ali Hasan, a Rohingya refugee and schoolteacher, has lived in Malaysia for the past 14 years.
He yearns to return home.
“I owned 18 hectares of arable land,” he said. “If my rights, properties and wealth are restored then of course I will return! If there is peace and stability, then why do I need to stay here [in Malaysia]?”

This is where Suu Kyi’s failure has been so acute. Nobody denies the intractable difficulties she and her country face. But she ought to have used her moral authority to affect a breakthrough in Myanmar’s ethnic divide, whatever it may have cost her politically or personally. Instead she proved she is no different than other opportunistic politicians. The Lady has feet of clay.
All nations have their demons. The challenge for leaders is to exorcise such evil: especially if their own, hard-core supporters are the ones who can be so easily swayed by such propaganda. Suu Kyi has failed at this.
Suu Kyi has ridden the global wave of the ethno-nationalism. But at what cost to Myanmar and the region?
So in Myanmar’s Game of Thrones, is Suu Kyi Cersei or Sansa? Maybe – and one desperately hopes that this is not the case – she’s just a Daenerys Targaryen, the Khaleesi that everyone loved- but who ended up, literally, setting her land ablaze.
Only time will tell but that is running out rapidly for the Rohingya and indeed, Myanmar.


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Aung San Suu Kyi

In Myanmar’s Game of Thrones, Aung San Suu Kyi’s moral failure invites ugly comparisons

Myanmar’s state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. Photo: AFP

FILE PHOTO: A poster supporting Aung San Suu Kyi as she attends a hearing at the International Court of Justice is seen in a road in Yangon, Myanmar, December 12, 2019. REUTERS/Ann Wang/File Photo

epa06259197 Rohingya children wait outside a food center to collect lunch time food in a camp in Palonkhali, Coxsbazar, Bangladesh, 11 October 2017. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on 10 October that around 11,000 Rohingyas crossed over into Bangladesh in a single day in a fresh surge of refugees fleeing an ongoing military offensive in Myanmar's Rakhine state. More than half a million Rohingyas, a Muslim minority in Myanmar mainly living in the Rakhine province, have fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape the ongoing offensive by the Myanmar army that began on 25 Augugust, after Rohingya rebels had mounted attacks on multiple government posts in the region. EPA-EFE/ABIR ABDULLAH

Aung San Suu Kyi wants Rohingya genocide case thrown out by UN court

Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi (left) leaves the Peace palace in The Hague on Friday. Photo: AFP

epa08064885 Protesters demonstrate on the last day of the genocide case against Myanmar at the Peace Palace in The Hague, The Netherlands, 12 December 2019. Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi defended her country at the International Court of Justice against accusations of genocide filed by The Gambia, following the 2017 Myanmar military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority. EPA-EFE/SEM VAN DER WAL

epa08065926 A supporter of Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi attends a demonstration in front of the Peace Palace on the third day of hearings on the Rohingya genocide case, in The Hague, The Netherlands, 12 December 2019. Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi is defending her country at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague against accusations of genocide filed by The Gambia, following the 2017 Myanmar military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority. EPA-EFE/KOEN VAN WEEL

‘There are kidnappers here, so be careful’: traffickers preying on Rohingya children in Bangladesh camps

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh's Ukhia district. . Photo: AFP

‘I worry about HIV every day’: Rohingya women prostituted for US$2 in Bangladesh’s overcrowded refugee camps

Rena, 18, sits in a mud hut with doors and windows closed as she tells her story of working as a prostitute in Kutupalong, Bangladesh. Photo: Thomson Reuters Foundation

Rohingya Muslims, who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, arrive in a truck after the government moved them to newly allocated refugee camp areas, near Kutupalong, Bangladesh, Sunday, Oct. 22, 2017. More than 580,000 refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when Myanmar security forces began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages. Myanmar's government has said it was responding to attacks by Muslim insurgents, but the United Nations and others have said the response was disproportionate. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

Rohingya Muslim children, who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, fly kite on a hillock inside a Kutupalong refugee camp, Bangladesh, Sunday, Oct. 22, 2017. More than 580,000 refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when Myanmar security forces began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages. Myanmar's government has said it was responding to attacks by Muslim insurgents, but the United Nations and others have said the response was disproportionate. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

This Week in Asia

Politics


She was once a beacon of democracy standing up to the country’s military but the genocide against the Rohingya has left Suu Kyi painfully exposed
Nobody denies the intractable difficulties she and her country face. But she ought to have used her moral authority to address the ethnic divide



She was once a beacon of democracy standing up to the country’s military but the genocide against the Rohingya has left Suu Kyi painfully exposed.


Rohingya Muslims

Human rights

Myanmar

Myanmar's democratic transition

International Criminal Court

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

Ceritalah

Ceritalah | In Myanmar’s Game of Thrones, Aung San Suu Kyi’s moral failure invites ugly comparisons

She was once a beacon of democracy standing up to the country’s military but the genocide against the Rohingya has left Suu Kyi painfully exposed Nobody denies the intractable difficulties she and her country face. But she ought to have used her moral authority to address the ethnic divide

She was once a beacon of democracy standing up to the country’s military but the genocide against the Rohingya has left Suu Kyi painfully exposed

Nobody denies the intractable difficulties she and her country face. But she ought to have used her moral authority to address the ethnic divide