Suu Kyi arrives wearing blinders

Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Thailand yesterday under an even darker cloud than anticipated when her three-day official visit was first announced. Myanmar’s state counsellor and de facto leader has in the interim declared that the much-maligned Rohingya population of her country will henceforth be referred to not as Rohingya, evidently a troublesome term, but as “Muslims living in Rakhine state”. It’s a bizarre and entirely unhelpful means of addressing the domestic bigotry that has seen the Rohingya become one of the world’s most persecuted peoples.

But Suu Kyi is in Thailand to bolster bilateral relations, and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is comfortable leaving the Rohingya and any other refugee issues off the agenda.

The two countries are experiencing reversals of fortune. Myanmar has traded its military government for a civilian one, while Thailand once again came under military rule with the 2014 coup. The democratic path has been an obstacle course of vested interests for both nations, Thailand with its corruption and coups and Myanmar still unable to evict the generals from their lofty positions of influence.

Our countries’ relationship is tainted by centuries of mutual mistrust that has lingered in recent decades amid overlapping territorial claims and the battles Burmese troops continue to wage against ethnic-minority militants along our border. It has always seemed that Thailand takes the side of whichever armed ethnic group is fighting the Burmese government, such as the Shan State Army-South, and opposes its allies, such as the United Wa State Army. Thailand-based magazine Irrawaddy recently reported the Thais had asked Myanmar to persuade the latter militia to move its three regiments from the Thai to the Chinese border, even though Myanmar has never previously been able to do so.

As long as international sanctions against Myanmar’s dictatorial military regime kept the country off limits to foreign investors, the spotlight shone generously on atrocities taking place inside Burma and along the Thai frontier. Now that Myanmar has begun a process of democratisation and sanctions are being lifted, the world’s focus has shifted to exploiting its cheap labour and national resources, and the brutality has been all but forgiven, even as it continues in some areas. 

The political uncertainty in Thailand brought a drop of almost 70 per cent in direct foreign investment last year, but it is soaring to record levels in our neighbour to the west thanks to the working arrangement reached between Suu Kyi and the generals. Theirs is a precarious compromise, though, and the military enjoys clinging to the reins of power and the wealth it brings. 

This is why the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who endured years of harassment and house arrest for her high-profile criticism of the former military junta, has now adopted a decidedly cynical, opportunistic, political attitude in refusing to hear the Rohingyas’ plea for assistance. She has embraced the popular view that “the Muslims who live in Rakhine” are aliens who, despite having been resident in the country for generations, deserve neither citizenship nor state protection, or even the right to travel freely. It is a cruel and unfair stance, based entirely on prejudice, and yet it is the view held by most people in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

Suu Kyi might be taking the path of least resistance in order to survive in government, or she could be bending to the popular will with an eye to longer-term democratic gains. Regardless, in Thailand, she might have had the eye-opening experience of visiting Myanmar refugees in one of the border camps – not Rohingyas but countrymen who are suffering just the same. That was supposed to happen tomorrow. Instead, her Thai hosts have cancelled the side trip for unclear reasons. Politics and democracy suffer once again due to lost opportunities.