The Mystery of Aung San Suu Kyi.

                by David Parmer / Tokyo

It would be convenient if there were some easy answers to the question: “What is going on with Aung San Suu Kyi?” There are some things we know, and some things we may never know about the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

We know she is Burma’s state counselor, her party, the National League for Democracy having won the 2105 election with her taking office in March 2016. We also know she has a record of fighting for democracy in her native Burma.

And we know that she has not spoken up about the alleged rape, murder, and genocide of Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine state. (Rohingya have left Burma by the hundreds of thousands and now the numbers are estimated to be at 500,000.) Nor has she spoken out for the two Reuters journalists who were jailed for reporting about the massacre of Rohingya. She rather claimed that they had been tried and jailed properly for violating the Official Secrets Act.

We also know that Suu Kyi has been roundly condemned abroad for her stance on these two issues, i.e. the Rohingya genocide and the jailing of the journalists. Several awards that have been given her  (short of the Nobel Peace Prize) have been withdrawn.

So what is going on with Suu Kyi? What is rationale for remaining in power (such as it is) and not speaking out? Does she feel she can ultimately do more good by ignoring these questions and staying where she is? Is she retreating to fight another day, or are her personal beliefs not so far different from the generals whose hands still rest on the levers of power in Burma?

Suu Kyi has spent 15 years under house arrest, and maybe the 73-year old widow has decided that she doesn’t have that many years left on this Earth, and she doesn’t want to spend them under house arrest, or in a real prison for taking action that would in no way change the policy of the real power holders in Burma. Those of us who have our freedom, and have always had it, may not have a clue about what it means to lose that freedom. Suu Kyi does, and maybe she is not willing to throw that freedom away for a lost cause no matter how “moral” it would seem in the short term.

It would be nice to have some easy answers, to find her “guilty” of not stepping forward and exerting her moral authority, or what is left of it. But we are not in her shoes and it is extremely hard to know the heart and mind of another human being–any other human being, but especially Aung San Suu Kyi.

Photo: Northern Ireland Office via flickr