Aung San Suu Kyi has gone from hero to villain

THE COMMITTEE that awarded the Nobel peace prize to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 described her as “an important symbol in the struggle against oppression” and an inspiration to those “striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means”. But to the crowd of protesters who gathered outside the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague this week, she is just the opposite: an apologist for military brutality, an oppressor of ethnic minorities and an abettor of genocide. “Aung San Suu Kyi, shame on you!” they chanted. As her motorcade glided past, windows tinted, the jeers and boos rose in a crescendo.

Ms Suu Kyi, who since 2016 has been Myanmar’s president in all but name, was at the ICJ to defend her country against charges of genocide in a complaint brought by Gambia on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, a group of Muslim countries. The case concerns the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority group that has suffered varying degrees of persecution since Myanmar’s independence in 1948. In 2017 the Burmese army went on the rampage in Rohingya areas in the far west of the country, in response to attacks on military outposts by a small Rohingya guerrilla group. The court heard horrifying descriptions of mass shootings and throat-slittings, with babies tossed into burning houses and women gang-raped or stabbed in the vagina. Listening to the accounts, Ms Suu Kyi sat, poised and calm, with fresh flowers in her hair, just as there always had been during her decades doggedly opposing military rule.