The Tragedy of Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi is perhaps the only political leader in history to have won a Nobel Prize for Peace for her defiance of military despotism, then joined her tormentors to gain political power, made a deal with the devil and gave it a human face and defended it in the International Court of Justice, won the elections again and was ousted in another coup. We probably have not heard the last of her, but she has fallen from her high pedestal as a defender of human rights to a disgraced agent of a military regime. No wonder, there was a demand for her to be stripped of her Nobel Prize. The daughter of an assassinated iconic prime minister of Myanmar today has the double infamy of giving up the struggle for democracy and legitimising the genocide of a section of her own people, the Rohingyas, by her government.

When I first saw Suu Kyi in Bhutan as the young bride of the British scholar, Michael Aris in 1971, she looked like one of the Bhutanese princesses. Having been a student in India when her mother was the Burmese ambassador to India, she was full of memories of India. When I was in Myanmar from 1983 to 1986, during the despotic rule of Ne Win, she was in London and she was hardly heard of in the country. In 1988 she came to Yangon alone to nurse her dying mother, but in response to the brutal killing of protestors against the military government, she spoke out against Ne Win and began a non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights and eventually became the leader of the opposition forces. Unaccustomed even to whispers against him, Ne Win placed her under house arrest in Yangon, incommunicado. She rejected an offer to be released if she returned to the UK.

The National League of Democracy (NLD) she co-founded in 1988 won more than 80 per cent of the parliamentary seats in 1990, but the results were nullified by the army. After she won the Nobel, some restrictions on her were lifted, but she did not travel to receive the Nobel for fear that she would not be allowed to return. She did not travel to London to attend her husband’s funeral in 1998. She continued in various forms of detention and she grew in stature nationally and internationally as the potential saver of the Myanmar nation, which was under military rule since 1962. After she won a parliamentary seat under a new constitution, which prohibited her from holding high office, she was allowed to travel to Oslo, London and Beijing. Her party won again in 2015.

Her reincarnation as the de facto prime minister (state counsellor) marked her disgraceful coalition with the army and indirectly with China. The control of the country was still in the hands of the army, but her international image gave respectability to the regime. India, which had already chosen to deal with the government in power, felt comfortable in doing business with Myanmar. The idea was to wean Myanmar away from China, or at least to balance China. Though she focused on finding peace with the many insurgencies in Myanmar, the action taken by her government, following some attacks by the Rohingyas in the Rakhine state, invited international criticism. Thousands of Rohingyas became refugees in Bangladesh and elsewhere and many perished in the exodus. Her defence of the actions against Rohingyas in the International Court of Justice was condemned by many countries and major human rights organisations as an opportunist and enemy of democracy.

Suu Kyi won the elections again in November 2020, but the army struck on February 1st, 2021, the day the parliament was to meet and arrested her and other leaders of her party on charges of election fraud. She faces an unknown future, particularly since she had become a puppet of the army and lost her aura as a defender of human rights. The condemnation of the coup by the international community was mild and some countries like Thailand characterised it as an internal matter of Myanmar. India expressed deep concern and said: “We believe that the rule of law and the democratic process must be upheld.” There was no call for Suu Kyi’s release in spite of her special connections with India. India had sent 15 lakh doses of the Covishield vaccine to Myanmar in January. India had also announced a gift of a submarine to Myanmar. India will strive to continue its cooperation with the government in accordance with India’s policy to deal with the regime in control.

The tragedy of Suu Kyi is also the tragedy of Myanmar as a nation. A country, which was self-sufficient in food and fuel at one time, was a democracy under U Nu, and was poised to become the most developed country in Southeast Asia, when General Ne Win staged a coup in 1962 and followed a policy which anticipated the future advent of Donald Trump in the US. He declared that Myanmar would follow its own policy of socialism with no links either with the super powers or neighbours. His isolationist policy made Myanmar poor after a million well-to-do Indians, the backbone of the economy, were expelled with nothing but the clothes they wore. No compensation was paid to any of them and the gold they deposited in the embassy remained unclaimed for many years.

As the head of mission in Myanmar for two years, I was busy organising cultural programmes for the impoverished Indians left behind in the paddy fields and playing golf to cultivate the military oligarchy which occupied all the civilian posts including those in the Foreign Office. They would not meet diplomats in their offices as that would involve work in reporting on the conversations. The only time I met Ne Win was when I accompanied him to Delhi a week after the assassination of Indira Gandhi to express condolences to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. In an emotional meeting during which he claimed to be an affectionate “uncle”, Ne Win said he wanted to improve relations with India and asked for a grand plan to increase trade and cultural relations. When I returned to Myanmar and announced the new plans, there was no response from the government and even a meeting was not possible in the Foreign Office. On some informal advice that we received that Myanmar will be happy if we purchased some rice, we did so, and that was the only commercial deal that took place. The experience was the same with other countries except Japan and South Korea which lavished gifts on Myanmar. The only time Ne Win met the ambassadors was when he held a golf tournament for heads of missions together with the senior military officers. He did crazy things like abolishing English in the country and ordering cars to drive on the left without any alterations to the cars or the roads, causing the highest number of accidents in one single day.  He personally went to a night club and beat up the musicians and destroyed their musical instruments.

North Korean terrorists bombed a mausoleum in Yangon where the South Korean president was to reach in the next few minutes, killing several members of his entourage, including the South Korean foreign minister and ambassador to Myanmar. North Korea chose Myanmar because anyone in a military uniform could do anything there. But the culprits were caught and executed with military precision.

Even after Ne win died, the military remained in absolute power till 1990 when the first general elections were held. Suu Kyi had the splendid opportunity to push for democratic reforms with the support of the US and ASEAN countries, if only she had continued the struggle. The Western sanctions were hurting the economy and sooner or later the people would have won. But she calculated that she was getting old and that her only way to come to power was through an unholy alliance with the enemy. Myanmar is now doomed to be a chaotic military dictatorship again.

About The Author

TP Sreenivasan

TP Sreenivasan is a former diplomat

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