Now this is a political relationship that makes perfect sense, an alliance fermented in the bowels of hell: Philippine president Duterte, conducting a death squad war against the poor, & Aung San Suu Kyi, conducting a genocidal war against Rohingya Muslims.
Duterte is on a state visit to Myanmar. Which is interesting since Myanmar is a leading player in the illegal drug trade, particularly in the trafficking of methamphetamines which are destroying the lives of so many Filipinos. Most of the meth trafficked to the Philippines comes from China. So is Duterte looking to get a better deal from Myanmar? Or are they discussing methods for exterminating human life?
It didn’t take Suu Kyi long to respond to the UN Human Rights Council which last Friday voted to urgently dispatch an independent monitoring team to Arakan state to investigate charges of mass killings, mass rapes, & other monstrous crimes against the Rohingya. Her office rejected the possibility of such an investigation saying it “would do more to inflame, rather than resolve issues at this time.” Inflame who? The generals & their Buddhist henchmen?
Just to make sure Suu Kyi was understood & could continue to play soft cop to his hard cop for genocide, the Myanmar military chief Min Aung Hlaing, who really runs the country, gave a speech warning the UN against interfering in the country & rejecting the possibility of a UN investigation. “We have already let the world know that we don’t have Rohingya in our country,” he said. “Bengalis in Rakhine state are not Myanmar citizens & they are just people who come & stay in the country,”
Some sources are speculating whether it’s possible for the UN investigation to proceed without Myanmar’s cooperation. What’s stopping them from interviewing the 75,000 Rohingya refugees who fled genocide just since October 2016? What about reviewing the satellite images from Human Rights Watch of entire villages torched by the Burmese army? Or the hundreds of videos of crimes being committed against Rohingya by soldiers? Do they have to look at incinerated villages & count the bodies in Arakan state to document genocide? Why the hell do they think 75,000 traumatized people left their own country to live in squalid refugee camps under threat of being deported to an uninhabitable island by Bangladesh?
Tomorrow marks the first year of Suu Kyi’s tenure as State Councillor. Just one year to make an about-face from human rights superstar to racist, nationalist defender of genocide. Given that the human rights thing was always a fraud, the fall from grace for Suu Kyi was a seamless transition.
(Photo on March 28th, 2017 by AP)