Yahoo News Revoke Aung San Suu Kyi’s Peace Prize
Image by Rob Beschizza
By Laych Koh
The Nobel Peace Prize has been called the world’s most prestigious prize. It represents the very highest of human achievement – the other Nobel prizes may salute the skills and attainments of the mind, but the Nobel Peace Prize honours the best of human will, courage and perseverance. Symbolically, it trumps Olympic medals in that vein, for it has nothing to do with physicality and everything to do with what makes us uniquely human – our ability to reason, to choose what is right, and to work towards a peaceful and moral society.
It is for this reason Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi should be stripped off her Nobel Peace Prize. Her inaction and painful silence about the plight of the Rohingya have put her on shaky ground over the years. Most recently, however, her outright dismissal of even the name ‘Rohingya’ – essentially, their very identity – renders her position as an advocate for peace untenable.
There are thousands upon thousands of people like me who are long-time admirers of the former opposition leader and now de facto leader of Burma. Like me, some must have spent hour upon hour mining through her words and actions from articles and interviews through these years - years of increasing oppression towards her country’s Rohingya minority.
We understood that outright support of the group would carry a great political cost at home, especially in the years of her trying to gain political power. The Rohingya group is widely disliked as they are seen by the majority as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. A rival party, the Arakan National Party, gained popularity with the Burmese for stoking anti-Muslim sentiment and calling for the deportation of the Rohingya. She has also said that she fears any statement she makes could fire up deadly tensions between the group and the Buddhist majority. With her status as a political player previously unsettled, one could perhaps understand a need for some careful political strategising. At some point, however, one runs out of the justifications for political survival. There was her party’s refusal to nominate a single Muslim candidate, something even the previous repressive junta was willing to do. Most troubling of all is the possibility that she actually harbours no special compassion for the Rohingya.
I am nobody to Aung San Suu Kyi. But like many other admirers out there, she was plenty to us. Like the Gandhis and the Mandelas of the world, she represented one of our true heroes, one of those special few who were symbols of what we collectively aspire to. As one of the only contemporary female figures to reach that standard, she meant something even more meaningful for women like me. We watched her struggle and great personal sacrifice, and kept faith that she would be able to reach her dreams of peace and liberty in her home country.
Personally, her name now evokes a reaction that borders on more than ‘a broken heart’. It aggravates me on every level – the mind and spirit included. To say she has deeply disappointed us is an understatement. Close friends would know my own account– I have greatly admired her, so much so that my now husband chose to use the pick-up line “So, I hear you like Aung San Suu Kyi” at our first conversation many moons ago. Obviously, the line worked. That story was recounted at our wedding. Her face, and posters calling for her freedom, are rife on my social media accounts. My friends would pass me Suu Kyi posters, books and assorted paraphernalia as presents over the years. I can therefore understand the confusion and distress of other admirers who have spent the last few years keeping our ears and eyes open – somewhat obsessively – over everything and anything she has said about the Rohingya problem.
With every year of her saying nothing, close friends would gently prod my position as a firm admirer. With every year of her saying nothing, I would try to think of the possibilities and justifications for what a figure like her must be going through. ‘Surely only a person like her could know what Burma needs now. How are we to know and judge?’, I argued one year. And for every year of her saying nothing, it grew more and more difficult to come up with those defences.
To be sure, the history and controversies of the Rohingya issue are extremely complex and contested. Researchers and writers on the Rohingya and Rakhine state have presented varying accounts of the history of the group - some disagree on their political identity and subsequently their rights as citizens. Both sides have accused the other of propaganda. The name ‘Rohingya’ itself is a very controversial subject within Burma, and scholars like Dr Jacques P. Leider have said that the Rakhine Buddhists resent that little attention has been paid to their objection of the term. Rohingya organisations denounce scholars like Leider as biased. It is a lot to unravel for a country newly opening itself up to the world for scrutiny.
What cannot be argued, however, is the denial of basic human rights for the Rohingya, and the brutal conditions that have seen them becoming the most desperate and downtrodden refugees and boat people in Asia.
Through her spokesman, Foreign Minister U Kyaw Zay Ya, Aung San Suu Kyi has said that her government will not call the Rohingya people by that name because it does not recognise them as citizens. Citizenship is a difficult issue for any nation, but to deny the group the right to even use the name they call themselves goes beyond anything we have heard in recent times. It is tantamount to saying “You do not exist.” Where and when have we seen these types of dangerous statements before?
Image from Rohingyana.org
There have certainly been other controversial Nobel Peace prize winners. US President Barack Obama (2009) and Henry Kissinger (1973) have even admitted they were undeserving of the prize. More notorious are winners like Cordell Hull (1945) and Rigoberta Menchu (1992). Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the prize in 1991, and I shall evaluate her role now simply on the basis of what she has said publicly herself. In 2012, when she could finally deliver her Nobel Lecture acceptance speech, she said:
“To be forgotten. The French say that to part is to die a little. To be forgotten is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity. When I met Burmese migrant workers and refugees during my recent visit to Thailand, many cried out: “Don’t forget us!” They meant: “don’t forget our plight, don’t forget to do what you can to help us, don’t forget we also belong to your world.” When the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to me they were recognising that the oppressed and the isolated in Burma were also a part of the world, they were recognising the oneness of humanity.”
How can we reconcile this with what she has done, or not done, with the Rohingya?
There is many more in that 2012 speech to make one shake in despair.
“Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for suffering degrades and embitters and enrages,” goes another line in her speech.
Even if she has a longer view of history, and has a strategy for integration and peace that cannot be public for now, how has she attempted to ameliorate the suffering of this group of people living in her country? Citizenship deliberations aside, how has she – on the most basic of levels – even acknowledged or attempted to help with lifesaving needs to those most vulnerable?
“I thought of prisoners and refugees, of migrant workers and victims of human trafficking, of that great mass of the uprooted of the earth who have been torn away from their homes, parted from families and friends, forced to live out their lives among strangers who are not always welcoming.”
How is it that Aung San Suu Kyi has not even visited any refugee camp that houses the Rohingya? Even if the group’s citizenship is contentious, how about reaching out in any shape, way or form – whether ostensibly framed as helping the children, women or elderly in the group? If she is being an astute politician, how is it that the extent of her astuteness only reaches so far as considerations of establishing power and influence? Her ‘fans’ could come up with even more justifications, such as the possibility of her doing these things in secret, or that she has such plans in future, but where and when will the line be drawn?
“Ultimately our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless, a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace. Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace. Each and every one of us is capable to making such a contribution. Let us join hands to try and create a peaceful world where we can sleep in security and wake in happiness.”
It is agonising to read these words, indeed, her whole speech, in context to what has been happening to the Rohingya in Burma. But keeping her accountable is necessary and important. For if security and happiness is selective, and deserving to only approved categories of people in her country, then that is not real peace, not the way Aung San Suu Kyi herself has presented it. Until and unless she redeems herself with unequivocal acknowledgement of the ‘dukha’ or suffering of the Rohingya, she is unworthy of the mantle of peace icon she assumes. Burmese nationalist? Yes. Long-suffering patriot? Yes. Symbol of peace? No.
I am not embarrassed to still have her in my considerations. I shall not remove her from my life – if anything, she is a stark reminder of why we should always be hyper aware of our heroes and role models. We should always be mindful of their flaws, their discouraging decisions and the possibilities of their very real, very human errors. But we should never fail to hold them to a higher level, and be prepared to discuss and critique them fairly, if only to understand how truly difficult the intersection between peace and politics is.
It is probable that she has a more nuanced view of the political complexities of her country and has a way forward for reconciliation. But purely on the basis of the own words coming out of her very mouth, Aung San Suu Kyi is currently undeserving of the Peace Prize that established her as a symbol of peace in our hearts. She may be a successful Burmese politician now, but she is global peace advocate no longer.
