Compass World: The Lesser Evil is Still Evil

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi presented the Sakharov Prize, an award that honors individuals that have dedicated their lives to the defense of human rights and freedom of thought, in October 2013. (Wikimedia Commons)

An oppressive military regime, half a century old, recently transitioned to a democracy, and the world rejoiced. This Sunday, that democracy held its second general election, but fewer people are cheering.

Only a small number of people in history have experienced the kind of fall from grace that Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has throughout the last decade. Once seen as an endearing, saintly warrior for democracy who deserved her Nobel Peace Prize, Suu Kyi is now internationally denounced for condoning genocide and restricting civil liberties, resembling the military regime she fought to end. Yet Suu Kyi’s party—the National League for Democracy (NLD)—just won parliament in a landslide (albeit by a smaller margin than the election in 2015). With the world almost completely against her, how is she able to retain an unwavering base at home?

There are two storylines to the answer: the government and the people.

Taxation—and Oppression—Without Representation

Voter suppression in Myanmar’s recent election cycle has been rampant. Authorities have prevented the Rohingya people, who reside in the northern Rakhine State that borders Bangladesh, from registering to vote. Around 600,000 Rohingya have been denied voting rights, including some 130,000 that remain in state-sponsored detainment camps.

Additionally, the Rohingya are barred from running for office. The government justified this with two pieces of legislation dating back to its repressive military rule: the 1982 Citizenship Law and the Election Law. Most Rohingya, under those laws, are not recognized as Myanmar citizens, and they are derided as “illegal immigrants” who crossed the border from Bangladesh, despite the fact that many can trace back their roots in Myanmar for generations. The Election Law requires all candidates running for office to be born to two Myanmar citizens. The lack of accepted proof prohibits many Rohingya from running.

The Myanmar government has outright removed polling places from ethnic minority centers, disenfranchising 1.5 million of a total voting population of 37 million. These areas, including Rakhine State, are obviously strategically chosen: It’s where the NLD lost most of its parliament seats in 2015 to one of its many rival parties, the Arakan National Party (ANP).

Unequal media coverage also tipped the scales in the NLD’s favor. Since the pandemic hit, the government declared journalism a ‘nonessential’ business, stranding many independent news media and journalists from traveling to events and covering the election. The two-state owned newspapers, which support Suu Kyi and her party, have been able to continue reporting.

There’s nothing innovative about the voter suppression or the biased media coverage that have been at the center of Suu Kyi and her party’s efforts to quell dissent and rig the election. These flagrant violations of fundamental, democratic civil liberties suggest she is only interested in securing the votes of ethnic Myanmar citizens.

In reality, Suu Kyi could comfortably win reelection without rigging the process at all. The real reason for all these maneuvers is to consolidate her ethnic Buddhist base.

Dirty Hands From Ethnic Cleansing

Myanmar is a country with deep ethnic and religious tensions. The country has an 88 percent Buddhist majority with smaller ethnic groups that inhabit certain regions. However, the Buddhist majority, which translates to 65 percent of the country’s voting bloc, harbors strong views on ethnicity and race, and holds a particular hatred toward the Muslim minority. There is a strong sense of who belongs and who doesn’t.

Massive numbers of Rohingya were forced to flee to Bangladesh, resulting in large refugee settlements in the city of Kutupalong that house more than 600,000 refugees. (Wikimedia Commons)

Animosity has always existed between the Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, thanks to nationalist sentiments promoted by the former military regime. Tensions peaked in late 2016 and early 2017 when the Myanmar military systematically and violently forced 740,00 Rohingya into Bangladesh in a disproportionate response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents. Reports of rape, extrajudicial killings, arson, and infanticides prompted the UN to call it “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Many Rohingya were confined in state-sponsored detainment camps, some to this day, with rampant disease, malnourishment, and lack of education. The Gambia brought this case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), prompting Suu Kyi to testify.

Myanmar’s people may have escaped its 50 years of military rule, but they still live underneath its shadow. Suu Kyi is ruling over a government that was designed by the last military generals in their final attempt to grab power before Suu Kyi’s party took over. According to the country’s current constitution, the state’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, is fully autonomous. It reserves the sole right to launch military operations and appoint commanders and ministers. The Tatmadaw occupies a quarter of national and regional parliament seats by default, as well as seats on the National Defence and Security Council.

Suu Kyi’s party does not have legal authority over the Tatmadaw, and it cannot cease military maneuvers against the Rohingya. However, neither has she extended any sympathy to them. Instead, she has indifferently propped up a shield in front of the military’s crimes against humanity.

Suu Kyi argued at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the Gambia’s claims of “crimes against humanity” for the 2017 campaign by the Myanmar army against the Rohingya. The former pro-democracy icon choosing to defend her country’s actions puzzled many observers. Looking at the aftermath, it’s not hard to see why: while she was condemned internationally, she was embraced at home.

“The chilling truth is that the moral stain of the ethnic cleansing may prompt international condemnation, but it hasn’t caused Suu Kyi to pay much of a price at home or to alter her approach to politics,” said Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national security adviser to former President Obama.

A Democratic Junta

Suu Kyi and the people of Myanmar have one shared enemy: the military. Supporters at home saw Suu Kyi’s testimony as standing up for her country and alienating herself from the military. This move helped her assert domestic power, as well as put pressure on the military in Parliament to pass constitutional amendments she had proposed. The amendments aimed to chip away the power of the Tatmadaw. Unfortunately, any amendment requires the support of more than three-quarters of parliament, allowing the Tatmadaw to shoot down any amendments—which they did.

Suu Kyi greets her supporters from the Bago region on August 14, 2011. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Myanmar people, or at least the majority, see Suu Kyi as a warrior for democracy at home and are willing to overlook the genocide of an ethnic minority which many already fear and hate.

But—and there’s always a but—Suu Kyi is not the liberal, democratic leader people had hoped, and a growing urban population is beginning to realize that. Suu Kyi has ruled the democratic country like an authoritarian leader: she has silenced government critics, censored the press, and jailed journalists. The press is more repressive than it was during the military regime a decade ago according to activist Saw Alex Htoo: “people are scared to openly criticize the NLD government.”

Despite her image as a pioneer for the people, Suu Kyi intends to make sure her party can retain a supermajority in government, allowing her to steamroll friendly constitutional amendments and diminish the power of the military.

Suu Kyi is patient. Her twenty-year-long house arrest in the name of democracy (which seems a bit ironic now) proves her patience. Some view her centralized power and inaction in the face of ethnic violence as a necessary compromise towards political transformation in a country striving for democracy.

Others argue that, behind closed doors, Suu Kyi is driven by power. It just so happens that democracy is her best way to get it. Hence, rigging an election she was already destined to win. Determined to continue the legacy of her father, Gen Aung San, the founder of the Burmese military who fought against British colonialism and founded modern Myanmar, Suu Kyi feels entitled to her destiny as heiress to the country, one for which she has made great sacrifices.

A Country for Everyone

Many in the international community view this election as a choice between the lesser of two evils: should they support the outright violent, oppressive military that already retains much control over the country, or should they support the leader who condones violence and oppression and centralizes power, but at least endorses the political institution of democracy? Many have held their tongue in criticizing this election’s shady operations because they, too, know Suu Kyi may be the better choice for moving Myanmar in the direction of democracy, even if she is morally questionable.

A 2009 protest outside the Myanmar embassy in London for the 19th anniversary of the country's last free and fair election, which the military regime rejected. A decade later, protests continue even under a new democratic regime. (Flickr, Creative Commons)

Maybe this admission suggests something deeper: the weight of an entire country cannot be placed on one pair of shoulders. Suu Kyi’s time as a democratic leader has come and gone. In Myanmar, new fighters for justice and democracy agitate for a democracy that works for everyone.

Under a disillusioned and flawed leader who cozies up to the political establishment for personal interests, that fight is lost. But many young Myanmar citizens are already stepping up to the challenge. Young activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi said in an interview, “We now, internalizing [Suu Kyi’s] words, cannot accept it. We truly think that somebody who had strong principles, who kept on going whatever the situation—that’s how we are doing. That’s how, as an advocate, as a human-rights defender, we have to be.”