Suu Kyis comments are indeed problematic. Among the most discriminated against populations in Myanmar is the Muslim community in northern Rakhine State, the Rohingya. Most are denied citizenship, and face severe restrictions on freedom of movement as well as numerous abusive policies. The 2012 clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine State that left 200 people dead and around 140,000 displaced, the great majority of them Muslims. Earlier this year, the violence spread to central Myanmar. The worst incident occurred in the town of Meiktila. The brutal killing of a Buddhist monk sharply escalated the situation, with two days of riots by a 1,000-strong mob resulting in widespread destruction of Muslim neighbourhoods, and leaving at least 44 people dead, including twenty students and several teachers massacred at an Islamic school. While Suu Kyis comments did not condone violence she did resort to false equivalency and conspiratorial allusions to global muslim power. Suu Kyis statements may be surprising coming from a nobel prize winning political saint but they are perhaps not as surprising coming from Suu Kyi in her current role as opposition leader in a still substantially limited democracy. Seeing it in that light does not excuse Suu Kyi but it does remind us of vital context often missing from our conversations involving political saints. Too often in our focus on whether figures like Suu Kyi are living up to our need for moral heroes, we miss the social, economic, religious, political and military drivers that shape times of political transition such as the one currently taking place in Burma. huffingtonpost/suchitra-vijayan/when-saints-rule-aung-san_b_4252104.html
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:46:02 +0000
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