Suu Kyi confesses that she was always a politician and never a voice of conscience

Suu Kyi has been a great disappointment for those of us who are human rights camp. When she was under house arrest, we campaigned hard for her immediate release hoping that she would promote the cause of pluralism and diversity in her fractured nation of many races and religions. But once released, far from standing out for human rights of the persecuted minorities in her country, she showed her real color - her chauvinistic ugly self. To her, politics has been more important than standing on moral high grounds. 

Thus, it was all too natural for her, at the dismay and utter frustration of us,  to ignore the Rohingya humanitarian crisis when more than 140,000 Rohingya have been displaced and made to live in horrific conditions in concentration camps as a result of genocidal campaigns against them by her own Buddhist majority. Deplorably, she kept silent to their plight. Many of us pondered and struggled to find the answer - how could she be unwilling to offering a strong repudiation of Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya, a Muslim group the country does not recognize as citizens and which the United Nations has called the most persecuted minority on earth. Disappointment, particularly in the international community, has been so great some have called for her Nobel prize to be rescinded. 

In a recent interview with Globe and Mail, she confessed that she was not the voice of conscience. I am glad to read her candid confession and that way no one should entertain any illusion about her chauvinism.  “I’ve always been a politician. I’ve never said that I was a moral organization or anything like that,” she told The Globe and Mail in an interview Friday in the Myanmar capital.

Here you can read her interview by clicking here.