Amnesty strips Aung San Suu Kyi of human rights award for ‘shameful betrayal of values’ in Myanmar

'We are profoundly dismayed that you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defence of human rights,' group tells Myanmar's civilian leader

Amnesty International has announced it is stripping Aung San Suu Kyi of a prestigious human rights award over her “shameful betrayal of the values she once stood for”.

The Ambassador of Conscience Award is the latest in a series of accolades to be withdrawn from Myanmar’s de facto leader, who has been criticised for failing to intervene to stop a campaign of violence against the country’s Rohingya Muslims.

Amnesty said it was withdrawing the award “with great sadness” because of Ms Suu Kyi’s “apparent indifference to atrocities committed by the Myanmar military and increasing intolerance of freedom of expression”.

While living under house arrest in 2009, Ms Suu Kyi was named as Amnesty’s Ambassador of Conscience ”in recognition of her peaceful and non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”.

Aung San Suu Kyi was named as Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience in 2009 'in recognition of her peaceful and non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights' ( EPA/KIM HAUGHTON )

But now, half way through her term in office and eight years after being released from custody, Amnesty said it was disappointed she had not safeguarded human rights, justice or equality in Myanmar.

The secretary general of the human rights group Kumi Naidoo said in a letter to Ms Suu Kyi: “Our expectation was that you would continue to use your moral authority to speak out against injustice wherever you saw it, not least within Myanmar itself.

“Today, we are profoundly dismayed that you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defence of human rights.”

He continued: “Amnesty International cannot justify your continued status as a recipient of the Ambassador of Conscience award and so with great sadness we are hereby withdrawing it from you.”

Amnesty has been a vocal critic of Ms Suu Kyi, and has previously accused her of failing to speak out about military atrocities committed against the Rohingya population in the country’s Rakhine state.

The Rohingya have been persecuted in the former British colony for decades, with the government denying them citizenship and excluding them from the 2014 census.

Since a fresh wave of violence began last year, the security forces are accused of having killed thousands, raping women and girls, detaining and torturing men and boys, and razing hundreds of homes to the ground in what a UN fact-finding mission has called it a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

More than 720,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh, but the government there have since struck a deal with Myanmar to send them back.

Mr Naidoo wrote: “Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to speak out for the Rohingya is one reason why we can no longer justify her status as an Ambassador of Conscience.

“Her denial of the gravity and scale of the atrocities means there is little prospect of the situation improving for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya living in limbo in Bangladesh or for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who remain in Rakhine State.

“Without acknowledgement of the horrific crimes against the community, it is hard to see how the government can take steps to protect them from future atrocities.”

Ms Suu Kyi has also been stripped of the US Holocaust Museum’s Elie Weisel award and Freedom of the City awards, which were withdrawn by Dublin, Edinburgh, Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle.

(Source: The Independent)

Rohingya crisis: Myanmar leader Suu Kyi 'should have resigned'

The outgoing UN human rights chief says Myanmar's de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi should have resigned over the military's violent campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority last year.

Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein told the BBC the Nobel Peace prize winner should have considered returning to house arrest rather than excusing the military.

A new UN report says Myanmar's military should be investigated for genocide.

Myanmar has rejected the report as one-sided.

The army of the Buddhist-majority nation - which has been accused of systematic ethnic cleansing - has previously cleared itself of wrongdoing.

The Rohingya are one of many ethnic minorities in Myanmar

The UN report, published on Monday, blamed Ms Suu Kyi, a long-term leader of the pro-democracy movement, for failing to prevent the violence.

"She was in a position to do something," Mr Hussein said in an interview with the BBC's Imogen Foulkes. "She could have stayed quiet - or even better, she could have resigned."

"There was no need for her to be the spokesperson of the Burmese military. She didn't have to say this was an iceberg of misinformation. These were fabrications," he said.

"She could have said look, you know, I am prepared to be the nominal leader of the country but not under these conditions.

"Thank you very much, I will resign, I will go back into house arrest - I cannot be an adjunct accessory that others may think I am when it comes to these violations."

Between 1989 and 2010, Ms Suu Kyi, 73, spent about 16 years under house arrest by the military government.

On Wednesday, the Nobel committee said Ms Suu Kyi could not be stripped of the Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991.

What has Aung Sun Suu Kyi said?
While it is acknowledged that Ms Suu Kyi does not control the military, she has faced international pressure to condemn the army's alleged brutality.

For decades, she was hailed as the heroine of the human rights community - most notably for enduring house arrest for her pro-democracy activism during a brutal military dictatorship.

When communal violence broke out in 2012 and displaced more than 100,000 Rohingya people, Ms Suu Kyi sought to reassure the international community and pledged to "abide by our commitment to human rights and democratic values".

"Muslims have been targeted but Buddhists have also been subjected to violence," she told the BBC at the time. "This fear is what is leading all the trouble."

She said that it was down to the government to bring an end to the violence, explaining: "This is the result of our suffering under a dictatorial regime."

Ms Suu Ky, seen here in 2015, with Myanmar's commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing

In 2015, her National League for Democracy party won a landslide election victory and she became Myanmar's de-facto leader.

As the Rohingya crisis continued, Ms Suu Kyi's comments on the situation tended to play it down or suggest that people were exaggerating the severity of the violence.

The last time she spoke to the BBC in April 2017, she said: "I don't think there is ethnic cleansing going on. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening."

Since an outbreak of violence started in August 2017, Ms Suu Kyi has missed several opportunities to speak publicly about the issue, including the UN General Assembly in New York last September.

She later claimed the crisis was being distorted by a "huge iceberg of misinformation" - but then also said she felt "deeply" for the suffering of "all people" in the conflict.

Myanmar, she said, was "committed to a sustainable solution... for all communities in this state."

Harsh words and bitter criticism
Imogen Foulkes, BBC Geneva correspondent

Mr Zeid has been an outspoken critic of Ms Suu Kyi

Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein is known for his bluntness and his comments on Aung San Suu Kyi were no exception.

He bitterly criticised her attempts to excuse Myanmar's military. This week, UN investigators published evidence linking senior commanders to act of genocide.

His harsh words are another indication that Aung San Suu Kyi may now go down in history not as a Nobel Peace prize winner and pro-democracy leader, but as a woman who failed to act in the face of unspeakable human rights violations.

What is the Rohingya crisis?
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and considered illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh despite calling the Rakhine state home for generations.

The military launched a crackdown in Rakhine last year after Rohingya militants carried out deadly attacks on police posts.

Thousands of people have died and more than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017.

There have also been widespread allegations of human rights abuses against the Rohingya, including arbitrary killing, rape and burning of land over many years.

(Source: BBC)

Did the world get Aung San Suu Kyi wrong?

 This is not the happy ending we were led to expect.

When Myanmar elected Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s party to power in 2015, she was widely portrayed as a sort of political saint, an icon who had endured great suffering to guide her people from dictatorship to democracy.

President Barack Obama praised her. Hillary Clinton embraced her in public. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, once compared her favorably to Gandhi.

Today Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, is the target of worldwide criticism for standing by as her country’s military wages a campaign of murder, rape and torture against the Rohingya minority group.

Supporters of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon, Myanmar, in October at what was billed as an Interreligious Gathering of Prayers for Peace. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

Though her fall from grace was exceptionally spectacular, this is a common story. Western leaders champion individuals, often activists who have made heroic sacrifices, as the one-stop-shopping solution to the problems of dictatorship or shaky new democracy.

In their zeal to find a simple solution to the complex problem of political change, they overlook their heroes’ flaws, fail to see the challenges they will face in power, and assume that countries are the products of their leaders, when it is almost always the other way around.

Warning Signs
“We keep ending up in this situation where we either idolize or demonize foreign leaders,” said Danielle Lupton, a Colgate University political scientist who studies how leaders’ behavior affects foreign policy.

Some of that is simply politics. But Ms. Lupton believes that those simplistic judgments are rooted in a quirk of psychology that makes them hard to avoid, and harder still to alter once they take hold.

“In political psychology there’s this notion of confirmation bias: that you have a predetermined belief about either an outcome or in this case whether a person is good or bad,” she said. That bias leads people to subconsciously select information that reinforces those beliefs — and to ignore facts that are inconsistent with it.

That helps explain how Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s champions in the West seemed to overlook signs that she might not be a paragon of liberal democratic values after all.

Ywama Monastery, which supports the Buddhist nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement, in Yangon. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said in 2013 that Buddhists feared “global Muslim power.” Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

In a 2013 interview with the BBC, for instance, she brusquely dismissed questions about rising violence against the Rohingya, saying that Buddhists had also been displaced from their homes and that there was fear “on both sides.” Asked why the violence had overwhelmingly affected Muslims, she deflected, saying that Buddhists lived in fear of “global Muslim power.”

Though such episodes mounted during her rise, they conflicted with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s saintly image, and so went largely unnoticed. Western leaders continued to embrace her, building her legitimacy as they pressured the transitional government to hold elections that were widely expected to elevate her to power.

“Confirmation bias is so powerful that we can ignore information that conflicts, and don’t even notice we’re doing it,” Ms. Lupton said.

That can feed a much more significant political bias, experts say, toward believing that a political system will take on the characteristics of its leader. In fact, the truth is often the opposite.

Together, those biases make it easy to conclude that if heroic individuals could just win power, that would be enough to bring democracy and freedom.

“We’re always in search of the leader that we can rely on to be our partner so that we can just kind of sign off on that person and go back to worrying about other things,” said Elizabeth Saunders, a George Washington University political scientist who studies American foreign policy.

A Long Line of Would-Be Saviors
The simple story of a crusading leader who will transform a nation rarely works out that way.

The United States once championed the Afghan leader Hamid Karzai as the democratic successor to the Taliban’s oppressive regime. But Washington was disappointed to find that Mr. Karzai, rather than rising above the problems of corruption and cronyism that had beset Afghanistan, established an inner circle that embodied them.

“If you hold up a leader as a paragon of virtue, you may aid in consolidating their power, which can have all kinds of unintended consequences,” Ms. Saunders said.

In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame was hailed as his country’s savior when he took office, with Western support, after the 1994 genocide. But despite successes in reducing poverty, he has proved to be an authoritarian leader. Opposition politicians often end up in prison, in exile or dead. Human Rights Watch has documented widespread military detention and torture.

And it was easy to support the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement when it was a rebel group fighting Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese leader currently under indictment for genocide in Darfur. But after the group’s officers and allies took power in the newly independent South Sudan, they helped plunge the country into civil war.

It is not only Western leaders who make such misjudgments. In the 1960s and ’70s, activists worldwide cheered the rise of African independence leaders like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, many of whom later hardened into dictators.

There are exceptions, such as Nelson Mandela, the first post-apartheid president of South Africa. But the Mandelas are so uncommon, and their successes rely on so many factors clicking into place, that they are still marveled over as wondrous mysteries, including among frustrated activists in Myanmar.

‘Features of a Dictator’
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is not Mr. Kagame or Mr. Mugabe, but after less than 20 months in office she is showing hints of the traits that define such leaders.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi at the White House in 2016. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

Upon winning power, she quickly sidelined many of the activists and civil society groups that had aided her rise. “She is only listening to those close to her,” said U Yan Myo Thein, an activist with the pro-democracy 88 Generation group and a former political prisoner, characterizing her inner circle as a “personality cult.”

“This is one of the features of a dictator,” he said.

As international plaudits for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi continued to mount, some in Myanmar saw growing signs that she was consolidating power and suppressing critics.

“Though they claim themselves as an icon of democracy, they want to centralize and control everything,” Kyaw Thu, who leads the prominent civil society group Paung-Ku, said of the elected government. He added, “Anyone not supporting their agenda is the enemy.”

Dozens have been charged under a law that restricts criticism of the government, an echo of the imprisonment of dissidents under military rule.

Aaron Connelly, an analyst at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, said such measures “have characterized N.L.D. rule in Myanmar,” referring to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party.

Even beyond her stance on the Rohingya, he said, “Aung San Suu Kyi has not been a particularly liberal leader.”

A Lesson to Learn?
Though senior policymakers seem confident in their habits, younger voices are beginning to question whether the international community, after so many such disappointments, might have something to learn.

“This pattern is far too frequent to be ignored,” Tim Hirschel-Burns, a Peace Corps officer in Benin, wrote on his personal blog.

Perhaps the underlying model, of reforming a troubled country by installing a promising leader, might have the problem backward, he argued. Perhaps change needs to come bottom-up, even if this is harder and messier and takes longer.

“People in these countries, just as we are, are largely products of their environments,” he wrote.

Treating Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi as somehow above Myanmar’s problems allowed the world to see only her “moral righteousness and bravery rather than the political force she represented,” he added.

A demonstration this month in Yangon in support of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s handling of the Rohingya crisis. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

Even leaders who say all the right things and show good intentions tend to reflect the systems through which they rise. If those systems remain broken, it is fair to blame leaders for their mistakes, but unrealistic to expect a different outcome.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, after all, may be enacting a version of democratic rule that is in line with what many of Myanmar’s citizens demand.

A 2015 survey by Asia Barometer found that most respondents in the country opposed checks on executive power, believed religious authorities should have a role in lawmaking and said citizenship should be tied to religion. Support for a strong-handed ruler was high and support for full rights for minorities was low.

“People want democracy in the sense of being rid of dictatorship and having a leader that’s popularly elected,” said Thant Myint-U, a historian and former United Nations official. “But that’s very different from accepting the whole panoply of liberal values, especially when it comes to issues of race, ethnicity or gender equality.”

It is worth asking how much of the Western anger now directed at Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, including calls to revoke her Nobel Peace Prize, is partly buyers’ remorse from supporters who regret their own role in transforming her into such a powerful symbol.

Andrew Selth, a professor at the Griffith Asia Institute, wrote in a recent article, “If Suu Kyi had so far to fall, it is because the international community raised her so high.”

(Source: NYT)

Myanmar ready to begin verification process for refugees who wish to return: Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi also opened the door to international observers, asking them to visit the south-east Asian country and see things 'for yourself.'

Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday said the country will soon begin the verification process for the return of Rohingya refugees who had fled the western Rakhine state in recent weeks in the backdrop of an army crackdown.

Suu Kyi, in a State of the Union address, the first since attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents on August 25 sparked a military response forcing over 410,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, said her administration wants to bring an end to suffering of all people as quickly as possible.

“We don’t want Myanmar to be a nation divided by religious beliefs or ethnicities. Hate and fear are main scourges,” Suu Kyi said. She added the responsibility to establish peace lies with the government.

The pro-democracy leader, who spent 15 years under house arrest during military rule in Myanmar, condemned the violation of human rights and unlawful violence. She has been criticised by the international community for her silence on the conflict that has festered in recent weeks.

“We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence. We are committed to the restoration of peace and stability and rule of law throughout the state…human rights violations and all other acts that impair stability and harmony and undermine the rule of law will be addressed in accordance with strict laws and justice,” she vowed.

Watch Suu Kyi’s speech

Suu Kyi went on to add that Myanmar is making efforts to restore peace and stability in the western state. “We want to find out why this exodus is happening. We would like to talk to those who have fled as well as those who have stayed. I think it is very little known a great majority of Muslims in the Rakhine state have not joined the exodus…the government has been making every effort to restore peace and stability and to bring harmony in Rakhine communities,” she said.

Describing Myanmar as a “complex country”, Suu Kyi said the country does not fear scrutiny from international community. “Burma is a complex nation. People expect us to overcome all the challenges in shortest time possible,” she said. “Myanmar does not fear international scrutiny, we are committed to finding a sustainable solution in Rakhine state.”

At the same time, she opened the door to international observers, asking them to visit the south-east Asian country and see things ‘for yourself.’

“We would like you (world) to think of our country as a whole, not just as little afflicted areas,” she said.


Suu Kyi holds offices of state counsellor and foreign minister even though she is barred from the presidency as her children have British citizenship.

(Source: The Indian Express)

Aung San Suu Kyi speaks on Rohingya Muslims - here are 10 takeaways from her speech

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday said the government is prepared to begin a verification process for those Rohingya Muslims who wish to return. Since August, over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have reportedly fled Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday addressed the Rohingya crisis, saying her government was prepared to begin a verification process for those who wish to return to the country.

Suu Kyi, who skipped the on-going UN General Assembly session in New York, delivered a State of the Union address in English on live television. Since August, over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have reportedly fled Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi delivers a speech to the nation over Rakhine and Rohingya situation, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar September 19, 2017. (Reuters Photo)

Meanwhile, the Indian government told the Supreme Court on Monday that there are approximately 40,000 illegal immigrants in the country.

Here are the top quotes from Aung San Suu Kyi’s address:

Our government has not yet been in power for even 18 months; we will complete 18 months at the end of the year. It is too short a time to expect us to meet and overcome all the challenges that we are expected to do. This does not mean we are not ready to overcome the challenges.

I am aware of the fact that the world’s attention is focused on the situation in the Rakhine state. Myanmar does not fear international scrutiny. We are committed to a sustainable solution that will lead to peace, stability and development for all communities.

We feel deeply for the suffering of all the people who have been caught up in the conflict. Those who have had to flee their homes are many, not just Muslims and Rakhines, but also small minority groups. The government is working to restore the situation to normalcy.

Since September 5, there have been no armed clashes and no clearance operations. We are concerned to hear that numbers of Muslims are fleeing across the border to Bangladesh. We want to find out why the exodus is happening. We would like to talk to those who have fled, and those who have stayed — more than 50 per cent of villages of Muslims are intact and are as they were before the attacks took place.

The government is working hard to enhance existing relations with Bangladesh. We hope to take forward the arrangements with regard to the security at the border, which we are trying to implement together.

Myanmar is prepared to start the verification process of refugees who wish to return. Those who have been verified as refugees will be accepted without any problems and with full assurance of security and access to humanitarian aid.

There are allegations and counter-allegations. Action will be taken against all people, regardless of religion, race, political affiliation who go against the laws of the land and violate human rights as accepted by the international community. Our government has emerged as a body committed to the defence of human rights.

Myanmar wants peace rather than war, harmony rather than conflict. The government wants to put an end to the suffering to our people as quickly as possible. We don’t want Myanmar to be divided on the basis of religious beliefs or ethinicities or political ideology. We have the right to our diverse identities.

We invite our friends who understand and sympathise with our aspirations and problems to join us to find new paths and answers towards peace, stability and harmony.
We would like to make our country a nation within whose border everybody can live in security and in prosperity.

(Source: The Indian Express)

Desmond Tutu condemns Aung San Suu Kyi: 'Silence is too high a price'

Nobel laureate issues heartfelt letter to fellow peace prize winner calling for her to speak up for Rohingya in Myanmar

The Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu has called on Aung San Suu Kyi to end military-led operations against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, which have driven 270,000 refugees from the country in the past fortnight.

The 85-year old archbishop said the “unfolding horror” and “ethnic cleansing” in the country’s Rahkine region had forced him to speak out against the woman he admired and considered “a dearly beloved sister”.

Despite Aung San Suu Kyi defending her government’s handling of the growing crisis, Tutu urged his fellow Nobel peace price winner to intervene.

“I am now elderly, decrepit and formally retired, but breaking my vow to remain silent on public affairs out of profound sadness,” he wrote in a letter posted on social media.

“For years I had a photograph of you on my desk to remind me of the injustice and sacrifice you endured out of your love and commitment for Myanmar’s people. You symbolised righteousness.

“Your emergence into public life allayed our concerns about violence being perpetrated against members of the Rohingya. But what some have called ‘ethnic cleansing’ and others ‘a slow genocide’ has persisted – and recently accelerated.

“It is incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country,” said the anti-apartheid activist. “If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep.”

Tutu joined the growing list of voices calling on Aung San Suu Kyi to do more to protect Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority as the United Nations estimated the number of refugees to have crossed into Bangladesh had reached about 270,000.

 Old friends: Desmond Tutu with Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon in 2013. Photograph: Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty Images

A spokeswoman for the UN high commissioner for refugees, Vivian Tan, said the revised figure – an increase of nearly 130,000 on Thursday’s estimates – did not necessarily reflect new arrivals in the past 24 hours, “but that we have identified more people in different areas that we were not aware of before”.

“The numbers are so alarming. It really means we have to step up our response and that the situation in Myanmar has to be addressed urgently,” Tan told Agence France-Presse.

Malala Yousafzai, the youngest-ever peace prize winner, said on Monday “the world is waiting” for Aung San Suu Kyi to act.

“Every time I see the news, my heart breaks,” she wrote on Twitter. “Over the last several years, I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment. I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same”.

The organisation that oversees the Nobel peace prize said Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s 1991 prize cannot be revoked.

Olav Njølstad, head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told AP that neither the will of the prize’s founder, Alfred Nobel, nor the Nobel Foundation’s rules provide for the possibility of withdrawing the honour from laureates.

“It is not possible to strip a Nobel peace prize laureate of his or her award once bestowed,” Njølstad wrote in an email. “None of the prize awarding committees in Stockholm and Oslo has ever considered revoking a prize after it has been awarded.”

On Tuesday, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said the government clearance operations in Rakhine “risked” ethnic cleansing. A Change.org petition to revoke Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel peace prize had reached 390,000 signatures by Friday.

On Thursday, Aung San Suu Kyi made her first spoken remarks on the crisis in Rakhine since government crackdowns began last month. “It is a little unreasonable to expect us to solve the issue in 18 months,” she told the Delhi-based network Asian News International. “The situation in Rakhine has been such since many decades. It goes back to pre-colonial times.”

According to UN estimates, up to 300,000 Rohingya could be displaced into Bangladesh due to “clearance operations” by the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s armed forces.

The army says it is rooting out “terrorists” among the ethnic Muslim population, after fighters from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked dozens of police posts on 25 August.

The Myanmar government claims about 400 people have been killed so far, though UN officials estimate the death toll to be more than 1,000.

On Friday, Tutu used his open letter to urge Aung San Suu Kyi to intervene and speak out.

“As we witness the unfolding horror we pray for you to be courageous and resilient again,” he said. “We pray for you to speak out for justice, human rights and the unity of your people. We pray for you to intervene in the escalating crisis and guide your people back towards the path of righteousness again.

(Source: The Guardian)

Desmond Tutu's letter to Aung San Suu Kyi

The Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu has written a letter to Aung San Suu Kyi to end military-led operations against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, which have driven 270,000 refugees from the country in the past fortnight. He has posted the letter on his Facebook page. Read on:

My dear Aung San Suu Kyi

I am now elderly, decrepit and formally retired, but breaking my vow to remain silent on public affairs out of profound sadness about the plight of the Muslim minority in your country, the Rohingya.

In my heart you are a dearly beloved younger sister. For years I had a photograph of you on my desk to remind me of the injustice and sacrifice you endured out of your love and commitment for Myanmar's people. You symbolised righteousness. In 2010 we rejoiced at your freedom from house arrest, and in 2012 we celebrated your election as leader of the opposition.

Your emergence into public life allayed our concerns about violence being perpetrated against members of the Rohingya. But what some have called 'ethnic cleansing' and others 'a slow genocide' has persisted – and recently accelerated. The images we are seeing of the suffering of the Rohingya fill us with pain and dread.

We know that you know that human beings may look and worship differently – and some may have greater firepower than others – but none are superior and none inferior; that when you scratch the surface we are all the same, members of one family, the human family; that there are no natural differences between Buddhists and Muslims; and that whether we are Jews or Hindus, Christians or atheists, we are born to love, without prejudice. Discrimination doesn't come naturally; it is taught.

My dear sister: If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep. A country that is not at peace with itself, that fails to acknowledge and protect the dignity and worth of all its people, is not a free country.

It is incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country; it is adding to our pain.

As we witness the unfolding horror we pray for you to be courageous and resilient again. We pray for you to speak out for justice, human rights and the unity of your people. We pray for you to intervene in the escalating crisis and guide your people back towards the path of righteousness.

God bless you.