How Suu Kyi sees the Rohingya crisis
Myanmar leader Suu Kyi has overseen what is said to be the world's fastest growing refugee crisis, as hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.
Risking death by sea or on foot, more than half a million have fled persecution in northern Rakhine state since August 2017. The government sees the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenshipMany of those who have fled describe troops and Rakhine Buddhist mobs burning their villages and attacking civilians. But Myanmar's military says it is fighting Rohingya militants, and denies ever targeting civilians.
Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who lived under house arrest for many years for her pro-democracy activism, is facing allegations that she has failed to speak out over violence against the Rohingyas.
So what has she said?
Human rights heroine
In 2012, more than 20 years after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Ms Suu Kyi gave her acceptance speech in Oslo. She said the prize "had drawn the attention of the world to the struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma [Myanmar]"."Burma is a country of many ethnic nationalities and faith in its future can be founded only on a true spirit of union," she said, before reading some of her "favourite passages" from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"Ultimately our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless, a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace".
They are the words of someone who, for many years, was hailed as the heroine of the human rights community. From the early 1990s until her final release from house arrest in 2010 she was a brave symbol of defiance against what was then a brutal military dictatorship.
Staying quiet
The same year she delivered her Nobel speech, an outbreak of communal violence in Myanmar saw more than 100,000 Rohingya people displaced and forced to live in makeshift refugee camps. At least 200 people were killed in fierce clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state.Ms Suu Kyi, who was leader of the opposition at the time, sought to reassure the international community and pledged to "abide by our commitment to human rights and democratic value".
But critics accused her of staying quiet, and one senior British minister told The Independent newspaper: "Frankly, I would expect her to provide moral leadership on this subject but she hasn't really spoken about it at all."
The displacement of the Rohingya continued in 2013, and by the autumn more than 140,000 people had been forced to leave their homes. The violence had spread from Rakhine state to other areas including central Myanmar, and substantial international assistance was being channelled through NGOs and UN agencies.
Blaming government
Ms Suu Kyi spoke to the BBC's Mishal Husain about the crisis in October of that year. She blamed the continued violence on a "climate of fear", and denied that Muslims had been subjected to ethnic cleansing."Muslims have been targeted but Buddhists have also been subjected to violence," she said. "This fear is what is leading to all this trouble".
She said that it was down to the government to bring an end to the violence.
"This is the result of our sufferings under a dictatorial regime. I think that if you live under a dictatorship for many years people do not like to trust one another - a dictatorship generates a climate of mistrust," she added.
In 2015, Ms Suu Kyi faced calls from around the world to condemn the ongoing crisis. The Dalai Lama said that he had twice urged her to act over the issue.
"I met her two times, first in London and then the Czech Republic. I mentioned about this problem and she told me she found some difficulties, that things were not simple but very complicated," he told The Australian.
In November of that year, Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won a landslide election victory. Hundreds of thousands of people, including the Muslim Rohingya, were not allowed to vote, and no voting took place in seven areas where ethnic conflict was rife.
She spoke to the BBC's Fergal Keane about the Rohingya crisis as votes were still being counted. "Prejudice is not removed easily and hatred is not going to be removed easily… I'm confident the great majority of the people want peace… they do not want to live on a diet of hate and fear," she said.
Ms Suu Kyi could no longer defer responsibility to the government. Her stock response before the 2015 election was that it was a problem for the leadership to solve. Now she had to prove she was willing to deal with it.
But she finds herself in an awkward position.
Ms Suu Kyi makes most of the important decisions, but the military retains control of three vital ministries - home affairs, defence and border affairs. That means it also controls the police. The military is the real power in northern Rakhine State, along the border with Bangladesh.
So Ms Suu Kyi has very little control over events there. Speaking out in support of the Rohingya would almost certainly prompt an angry reaction from Buddhist nationalists and military officials. Not to mention the general public who have very little sympathy for the Rohingya.
This goes some way to explaining why she has rarely spoken out in their favour.
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