Just weeks ago, I ridiculed the celebrated platform The Atlantic gave Obama adviser Ben Rhodes to finally recognize what some of us have been decrying for nearly 10 years. That recognition, of course, is that Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s has been complicit in Myanmar’s genocidal crimes against the Rohingyas.
But, even though woefully belated, his celebrated recognition might have had a salutary effect. Because, rather like Johnson losing Cronkite, Suu Kyi losing Rhodes might be the proverbial light she needed to see how far she’s fallen from grace and begin making amends.
To date, she has either played Pontius Pilate or simply denied the genocidal crimes her government committed against the Rohingyas. But there’s no washing her hands of this:
Aung San Suu Kyi, the State Counsellor of Myanmar, met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest, where the two exchanged their common and rather controversial views on both Muslims and migration.
These talks reflect how the tables have turned for Ms Suu Kyi, once an icon of democracy, who views her meeting with Europe’s most xenophobic leader as an important accomplishment.
(Bangkok Post, June 19, 2019)
Given that PR faux pas and Rhodes’s public censure, it’s no wonder Suu Kyi appears to finally have a vested interest in repatriating the Rohingyas. Unfortunately, she has lost so much public trust and goodwill that Suu Kyi entreating the Rohingyas to return to Myanmar today is rather like Hitler entreating Jews to return to Germany in the early 1940s.
The lack of returnees on Thursday followed the same tragicomic script as previous efforts to get the Rohingyas home. … Not a single Rohingya boarded the five buses and two trucks that were prepared on Thursday to transfer them over the border to Myanmar.
(The New York Times, August 22, 2019)
In fact, reports are that less than 50 daring souls have accepted Suu Kyi’s repeated assurances – not only that it’s safe for the Rohingyas to return to Myanmar but that local Buddhists have repented their genocidal ways. Forget Hitler, even Ramses would have had more takers if he’d given similar assurances for the Jews to return to Egypt.
In any event, so much for this road to her redemption. Hell, the Rohingyas are not even returning in numbers sufficient to provide Suu Kyi a redeeming photo op.
Instead, today marks the second anniversary of their cleansing/exodus from Myanmar. Over one million of them are festering away in squalid, disease-infested refugee camps, which neighboring Bangladesh set up. But it would be the understatement of the century to say the Rohingyas have overstayed their welcome.
Alas, continuing one of the aforementioned analogies, I fear it might take the Rohingyas longer to find their Promised Land than the nearly 3,500 years it took the Jews to find theirs. And this, despite the best efforts of the United Nations and other international organizations. Indeed, they are now trying to do for the Rohingyas what they’ve been trying to do for the Palestinians for nearly 75 years to no avail.
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