Thanks to Haseeb Rahman’s vigilance about the photo used on the petition to rescind Aung San Suu Kyi’s honorary Canadian citizenship, the initiator of the petition has changed the photo to one from Arakan state & removed the one from a quack healer in India. It was an honest mistake on her part, not an attempt to mislead. Changing it wasn’t a matter of being pedantic but that Suu Kyi & BBC are denying genocide by blithering about fake photos.

One can be dismissive of such petitions since they won’t stop the genocide but what they do isn’t small potatoes. They help educate people, help increase public pressure on Burma, & most importantly help build solidarity with the Rohingya people. It has now reached over 24,000 signatures in just a few days which signifies that solidarity is growing around the world. It would be to the advantage of the Rohingya if the petition succeeded in getting Suu Kyi bounced from this honorific. It’s not that the honorific means very much but that Suu Kyi is being exposed for genocide denial.

Apparently many, for different reasons, think criticizing Aung San Suu Kyi is pointless. That would be a serious misunderstanding of the political role she plays in Burma, particularly her role in denying genocide against the Rohingya people. Constitutionally, she does not control the Burmese military. The way it was set up in the so-called transition from military to civilian rule is that the junta continues to run Burma behind the scenes while Suu Kyi functions as the front office for the military, as a civilian facade. That way it was possible, without facing opposition from human rights activists, for countries to lift the human rights sanctions imposed after the violent crackdown on the 1988 social uprising when the junta jailed & executed thousands & forced thousands of Burmese dissidents into exile.

The US made a big splash of lifting its sanctions on Burma, including well-publicized trips in 2011 by then secretary of state Hillary Clinton & in 2012 by president Obama. Obama’s trip was during the major genocidal assault in Arakan state sending tens of thousands of Rohingya fleeing for their lives. Meeting with Suu Kyi, like a pilgrimage to the goddess of human rights, was the centerpiece of their trips. The US was lifting the sanctions to get in on the neoliberal investment free-for-all in Burma but also as a way to counter the influence of China which was the leading international patron of Burma during the sanctions, the primary supplier of arms, & already had many joint venture mining & oil exploration projects with the military.

Suu Kyi may function as civilian facade for the junta but she is not merely a decorative piece & it would be misogyny or maybe just misunderstanding to consider her as such. She is an active, committed representative of their political, economic, & military interests. Her primary mission is to use her now tarnished human rights credentials to deny genocide in order to shill for foreign investment. Criticizing her role is part of exposing military rule. As her denial of genocide against the Rohingya people shreds her image as human rights icon, an understanding of what is really going on in Burma emerges & military rule can no longer hide behind her pile of humanitarian awards.

Photo is Suu Kyi with General Min Aung Hlaing, Commander-in-Chief of the Burmese military who has been organizing the genocide of the Rohingya people since 2011.

(Photo is from 2015)

What a pleasure to see several photos of Kashmiri friends with Rollie Mukherjee at her art show & sale in Srinagar last week. Much of the proceeds will go to the work of Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) co-founded & chaired by Parveena Ahangar, shown in this photo with one of Rollie’s works.

It’s not misogynist to condemn Aung San Suu Kyi for colluding in genocide. It’s misogynist to call her a bitch rather than a human rights criminal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1MoehFI3io

This video posted as a comment is worth highlighting. It’s a recent interview with Priscilla Clapp who served as US Chargé d’Affaires in Burma from 1999 to 2002. After the brutal crackdown on the democracy movement of 1988, the US lowered its level of diplomatic representation from Ambassador to Chargé d’Affaires. She served before the US had fully implemented sanctions against Burma for human rights crimes. Clapp’s analysis here more than answers the question “where does the US stand on the Rohingya genocide?” even though she no longer serves as a US diplomat but for the Asia Society. She comes from the same school of diplomacy & deceit as Henry Kissinger.

It was during Obama’s tenure that most sanctions against Burma were lifted so that the US could invest in neoliberal scorched earth economic policies instituted by the military which controls the economy & government of Burma.

Nearly 87,000 people have signed a petition to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of her Nobel Peace Prize. Over 21,000 have signed a petition to strip her of honorary Canadian citizenship. Neither will stop the genocide but they represent a shift in adulation of Suu Kyi as a champion of human rights. Her glory days are over. More importantly, they represent growing support for the Rohingya people.

Chicago rally in solidarity with the Rohingya people, Saturday, September 16th:

Many will think my judgements too unforgiving of Desmond Tutu for a tepid response & the Dalai Lama for a cowardly response to the apocalyptic genocide of Rohingya Muslims. Twenty-year-old Malala Yousafzai gave the sharpest rebuke. Despite the Nobel Peace Prize being an honorific primarily awarded war criminals, those few individuals who receive it for humanitarian reasons have considerable stature & authority they can use to build international solidarity with the Rohingya. If they cannot or will not use that to speak out forcefully & without equivocations against genocide, then they don’t dishonor the Nobel so much as they dishonor themselves.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, addressing the Burmese face of genocide as “my dear sister”, issued a public rebuke to Aung San Suu Kyi saying: “If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep.” It’s a moving appeal but about five years behind events. Suu Kyi has by no means been silent on the genocide against the Rohingya people but has repeatedly mocked the accusations of Rohingya in public interviews & forums abroad as she tries to drum up investments in the Burmese economy. She ridiculed the claims of mass rape by the military; she denies visas to UN & human rights monitors to enter Arakan state. That is not silence. It is collusion.

This photo of Archbishop Tutu & Suu Kyi was taken in Yangon in 2013–one year after the genocidal military assault on Rohingya that sent tens of thousands fleeing for their lives.

(Photo by Than Win/AFP/Getty Images)