Aung San Suu Kyi frustrated by USA/Europe's double standards

FMT:

Suu Kyi scolds world for lacking focus on Rohingya ‘terrorists’

Aung San Suu Kyi is disappointed over lack of scrutiny on ‘terrorists’ in Rakhine state (File pic)

YANGON: Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has bemoaned the lack of global scrutiny on extremism and “terrorists” inside Rakhine state, where her country’s army stands accused of committing genocide against Rohingya Muslims.

The comments from the Nobel laureate are part of a long standing defence of the army campaign against the maligned Rohingya, which drove nearly three-quarters of a million of the minority into Bangladesh in 2017.

That campaign brought US sanctions on key military figures and allegations of genocide by United Nations investigators.

The Myanmar military has said their actions were necessary and proportionate to stamp out Rohingya militants – a defence Aung San Suu Kyi reiterated in an interview with Japan’s Nikkei newspaper on Wednesday.

“There are certain extremist elements who do not want peace in Rakhine… because for many terrorists, problems are what they thrive on,” she said, referencing attacks by Rohingya rebels in 2017 that sparked a scorched earth army operation.

“So we are disappointed… that the international community has paid very little attention to the terrorist element of the problems in Rakhine,” she said.

I once wrote that the Rohingya people were originally from Indian-British Bengal which then became East Pakistan and today, Bangladesh.

After the 1st Anglo-Burmese war in 1826, the victorious colonial British encouraged the mainly Muslim Bengalis (already Pommie colonial subjects) to migrate into the Arakan region (now called Rakhine State) of Burma - perhaps as part of the Pommie 'divide & conquer' colonial strategy.

Like most British colonial flotsam (eg. Chinese and Indians in Malaysia, Indians in Fiji and Africa, etc), the Rohingyas are particularly not welcomed at all in their country of domicile, Burma or today's Myanmar.

Unlike Chinese and Indians in Malaysia, the Rohingyas have found assimilating or integrating with Burmese either too difficult or too unpalatable (not unlike Jews of medieval and pre-WWII Europe who lived in socially-insulated Jewish communities - if you have seen the movie 'Fiddler on the Roof', you would have known how racist the pre WW1 European Jews were)

And in turn, the Myanmarese (or Burmese) do not want the Rohingyas, I believe for three reasons, namely:

(a) as the FMT news indicated, the Rohingyas have not been exactly 'angels' in Myanmar, and that's only the most recent incidents, one out of several hundreds if not thousands of such incidents throughout the years of domicile in Burma.

Like descendants of Indian migrants in Fiji, the Rohingyas have been racially arrogant and ethnically aggressive to the local Myanmarese in Rakhine State, ill treating the Myanmar indigenes,

(b) as 'imported' Muslims living in a predominantly Buddhist country, history tells us the Rohingyas gave their loyalty to what was East Pakistan (Bangladesh today), with Rohingya leaders asking Ali Jinnah in the 1940's to incorporate the Burmese Arakan State into Pakistan.

But Ali Jinnah wisely refused to interfere in Burmese affairs. That then galvanised the Rohingyas to attempt to secede Arakan from then-Burma to form their own Islamic State, hence

(c) the Rohingyas were and presumably still are NEVER loyal to Myanmar. That feeling of alienation has been reciprocated kaukau by the Myanmarese.

The very term 'Rohingya' has been a continuation of an older term 'Rooinga', an attempt by the Muslim (Indian) Bengalis to establish a distinct identity for themselves (like many Jews in medieval and pre-WWII Europe especially in Poland) and to also identify themselves as indigenous to Rakhine State.

Thus I personally don't have much sympathy for their predicament. They chose to be different, thus they should not grumble or cry when they are treated as such.

Thus the current conflict has been both ways, with Rohingyas posing insurgency problems for Myanmar, and Myanmarese military going after the Rohingyas, with an intent to chase them back into Bangladesh.

What irates Aung San Suu Kyi have been the double standards of the Western World, something Asians, Africans, South Americans and the Middle-East know all too well. There exists a deep set prejudice that unless a nation follows the American (or European) standard and/or political system, that nation is not worthy of respect.

It's what made the Yanks and Europeans criticise China repetitively vis-a-vis the Hong Kong issue, to wit, that China has been eroding the rights of the Hong Kongers. Other than an Extradition Bill, which should be normal for most countries and which had been prompted by apparently a Taiwanese murderer on the run across the borders of the 3 Chinese states, pray list what erosion of rights have China been guilty of, even as the violence continues in HK?

But the Westerners prefer to believe in the HK protesters and yet close an eye to the violence and atrocities (including the human rights of policemen and Mainlanders living in HK) perpetrated by the protesters.

what charming people -deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize? 

'Tis the same in the Middle-East, as if only Arabs (or Iranians) have been trouble-makers/terrorists but not the Israelis.

And we have witnessed how the USA condoned (still does) the fascist states that were Pinochet's Chile, and dodgy allies like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and a number of dictatorships.

in China - condemned by the USA 

in Palestine - silence from the USA  

While we can expect Muslim nations like Malaysia to blindly support Pakistan and the Rohingyas, it's little wonder Aung San Suu Kyi has been frustrated by the double standards of the politically more mature (supposed to be) USA and Europe.