The Lady and Her Tribe

The number one lesson Westerners seem to be learning about Aung San Suu Kyi this year is that she won’t say no to her tribe. As the number of Rohingya pushed into Bangladesh from Myanmar surpassed the number remaining in this country, her words have sounded strikingly similar to the words of the military—an institution dominated by her fellow Bamar ethnicity. She has spoken of security, stability, and sovereignty. She hasn’t challenged assertions by members of her own government that the Rohingya faked rapes and burnt houses. Instead, she has asked, “Why are these people fleeing?”

International criticism of her has been sharp. Several of her awards and honorary degrees have been rescinded. It’s difficult for outsiders, who maybe created and surely want to believe the fairy tale in which Myanmar’s dark past is wiped clean by an attractive woman with a Nobel Peace Prize, to watch the symbol of that story say the “wrong things.” It’s even more difficult to sit idly by as satellite photos and refugee stories emerge to confirm the reports of mass killings and other atrocities that the military and government have been denying. Maybe the most damning words of all came from Suu Kyi’s fellow Nobel laureate, Desmond Tutu, who wrote her to say that “if the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep.”

To the Myanmar general public lately, she is not saying the wrong things and her silence is appropriate. If anything, she is becoming a martyr in the minds of most Myanmar people. “We stand behind Mother Suu,” read the placards at impromptu demonstrations here. Other posters, declaring many areas of the country to be “Muslim-Free Zones,” have appeared with increasing frequency of late. Anti-Rohingya talk both pleases crowds and keeps the spotlight away from politicians’ failures.

Who knows what feelings lie buried in her heart? She clearly knows what her tribe wants her to say and not say.