For the past three decades, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, currently Myanmar’s state counsellor and ‘de facto leader’, had been widely recognised as one of the world’s icons of peace and justice, a living embodiment of indomitable will under intense pressure. Much of her image as an unflinching crusader fighting for restoration of democracy—despite long spells of detention lasting nearly 15 years—was created as much by her own graceful persona and resoluteness as by the relentless propaganda of western media. That unabashed admiration seems to have attenuated to an alarmingly low level.
What has brought Suu Kyi’s role under the withering, critical lens of the West is the horrible condition and relentless suffering of Rohingyas, a Muslim minority in the Buddhist majority Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. In recent weeks, after a few Rohingya militant strikes, Myanmar’s army have killed, raped, looted and committed arson with impunity, forcing over 4,00,000 to flee to...
