Aung San Suu Kyi, the icon of democracy and de facto leader of Myanmar, faced one of her biggest tests on Tuesday: an internationally televised address in response to charges of ethnic cleansing by her country’s military. Over the weekend, António Guterres, UN secretary-general, said she had “a last chance” to halt the army offensive before the situation became “absolutely horrible”. Her chance has come and gone and she has failed the test.
In a speech that lacked humanity or compassion, she refused to mention the word “Rohingya”, the majority Muslim ethnic group being targeted, except in the context of a militant group involved in the violence. Her attempts to draw equivalence between sporadic militant attacks and what she euphemistically referred to as the military’s “clearance operations” echoed the controversial “both sides” comments Donald Trump made in the wake of white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia.
She appears incapable of distancing herself from the views of many majority Buddhists in Myanmar who believe Rohingya, who do not have citizenship in the country, are an alien terrorist group that needs to be “dealt with”.