From Complicity to Consent - The Role of Myanmar's Civilian Government in the Rohingya Crisis

In November last year, at the height of the Rohingya exodus from Myanmar, I wrote a piece for the Post-Conflict Research Center examining Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in the military’s ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State. In it, I argued that whilst she absolutely deserved international condemnation for her refusal to speak out against the actions of the military, she in fact had little power to prevent General Min Aung Hlaing from continuing his violent crackdown. Myanmar’s military is a force that is both independent of the civilian government, and extremely influential in the politics of the country. Suu Kyi’s complicity in what is now being referred to as a genocide by the United Nations was, and is, reprehensible, but until now she has not actively contributed to the suffering of the Rohingya, merely stood by and allowed it to happen.

However, on September 3^rd 2018, two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were sentenced to seven years imprisonment for their role in uncovering a massacre of 10 Rohingya men by the Myanmar military and Buddhist villagers in September 2017. They were convicted for a supposed breach of a colonial-era law, the Official Secrets Act, despite the fact that a key witness (and member of Myanmar’s police force) testified that senior police chiefs had in fact framed the defendants in order to suppress the story. The decision was immediately condemned as a brazen attempt to discredit and suppress journalism critical of the regime, with several civil society organisations from Myanmar taking to Twitter to declare the case “neither free nor fair and… completely manipulated”.

For Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government, this arguably marks a step away from disinterested accomplice in the anti-Rohingya violence and into the realm of explicit supporter. As Ye Htut, a spokesperson for a previous administration, told Reuters: “If you arrest and punish the journalists who are doing their job in Rakhine it means you have something to hide”. In response, Deputy Information Minister Aung Hla Tun told the same journalist that the government was simply following the rules the law had laid out, and that they were aware that these were unfair and were trying to change them. However, this statement ignores the fact that the Official Secrets Act is often left unenforced due to its status as an out-of-date law that no longer applies to the modern situation in Myanmar. Rather, Suu Kyi’s government, at first a supporter of press freedoms, has gradually taken steps to discredit the media throughout her tenure as de facto leader of the country.

Around 20 journalists were prosecuted in 2017 under dubious ‘defamation laws’ and one US official claims that when he confronted Suu Kyi about the now-convicted Reuters journalists when they were awaiting trial, she angrily referred to them as “traitors”. Meanwhile, she has also vehemently denied other reports of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine as “fake news”, at the same time that evidence has emerged that the Myanmar military has released faked images of Rohinyga refugees in a “sinister re-write of history”. Suu Kyi denounces the free press whilst the military cover up their crimes. As a result, support for both the civilian and military arms of the government remains relatively strong in Myanmar.

Any aspiring genocidaire will tell you that in order to get away with murder you must first gain the support of the people by moulding them to conform to your agenda. A free press prevents the party line from becoming the only line, and that is why it is instrumental in securing a healthy democratic system. Without it, alternative opinions melt away and all that is left is the voice that silenced the others. In Myanmar’s case, this is the voice of the military. Suu Kyi continues to be outside of the decision-making element within the military brass – Min Aung Hlaing remains the architect of one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time – but she is an integral, and increasingly important, cog in a machine that allows the killing to continue.

On August 21^st of this year, Suu Kyi asserted that the biggest threat to Rakhine state remained terrorism, and that violent Rohingya factions posed a major threat not just to Myanmar but to the region. The implication here is that the military crackdown in Rakhine is not only necessary but should be actively encouraged. In the August 25^th 2017 militia attacks on police checkpoints in Rakhine that sparked the military response and the start of the crisis, around 71 people were killed. The suspected figure of 43,000 dead Rohingya, and well over 1 million displaced, suggests either an overreaction on the scale of absurdity, or a planned-out military operation for which Aung Hlaing and the military brass simply needed an excuse.

Meanwhile, clearing operations in Rakhine continue as 48 investment projects in the state, many backed with Chinese and Indian money, are given the green-light. Despite international condemnation, both the Indian and Chinese governments continue to support Myanmar’s stance on the Rohingya ‘terrorists’ in Rakhine.

Whatever the reasons for the violence perpetrated against the Rohingya population, the Myanmar military now undoubtedly has the blood of thousands of innocent civilians on its hands. No longer content simply to bury her head in the sand, Aung San Suu Kyi instead has doubled down on her support for the military operations and hardened her rhetoric against the Rohingya. This is a very slippery slope and the bottom is a long way down. As the UN calls for military generals in Myanmar to be summoned to the International Criminal Court to face charges of genocide, Suu Kyi, the peace icon and Nobel Laureate, plants herself firmly on the wrong side of history.