Aung San SuuKyi’s silence over Muslim massacre is simply criminal
On the eve of my birthday on August 15, my 10-year-old son while extending birthday greeting subjected me to a rigorous general knowledge (GK) test.  While holding his 4th Standard general knowledge (GK) book in his hand, he threw volleys of questions at me. It was amazing to listen to him talking about outstanding women in politics. He talked about Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and Hillary Clinton and read out the reasons of their outstanding achievements from his GK text book. But he asked me to name the woman ‘who is the leader of the movement of democracy in Myanmar. She has spent many years under house arrest. In 1991, she was awarded the Noble prize for her non-violent resistance to the military dictatorship in Myanmar.’ Basically, what I learnt, he was unable to pronounce the name of the lady and cleverly quizzed me to pronounce her name – AungSaSuuKyi. Frankly sharing, I too had to read out her name with utmost caution.
But this quizzing about Myanmar ‘Nobel’ lady immediately took me to the images showing ‘massacre of Muslims’ in Burma. For the past few weeks now, various pictures, sending shivers through ones spine showing hundreds of dark-skinned men spread across an unidentified beach are passing around on social network site - Facebook. The men appearing in sleeping position and laying against each other, their faces averted from the camera, while men in fatigues holding semi-automatic weapons towered over them have been captioned: “Continuity of massacre of Muslims of Burma by Buddhists. More than 1,000 killed yesterday. Please share.” Even as the pictures are powerful enough to ignite an uprising, a sort of lull was visible as reaction to this provocation was almost negligible.
However, my curiosity led to some probing and came across various reports about the incidents happening in Burma in which Muslim community has been a target of Buddhist majority community for a very long period now. But there was a sigh of relief when I learnt that the gruesome pictures put on social network sites are fake.
Violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Rakhine region erupted in June after the alleged rape and murder of a Buddhist girl by Muslim men. The scale of violence led to the state of emergency in the province and the entry of Burma’s security forces lent aggravating dimensions to this conflict. Amnesty International said in early August that Rakhine Buddhists, together with security forces, purposefully meted out devastating violence against the Muslim minority.
Even as this kind of outburst against minorities happens anywhere in the world, one thing is disgusting when the preachers of peace that too who belong to the same conflict zone turn blind eye to the persecution meted out to the humans because they are in minority. When rest of the world has started showing concern to the plight of the Muslims in Burma, the much-vaunted Nobel peace laureate Aung San SuuKyi has been observing ‘criminal’ silence. It smells an attempt to placate her constituency ahead of general elections in 2015. Precisely, this ‘Noble’ lady has missed an extraordinary opportunity to live up to her reputation. The brazenly hypocritical and unscrupulous woman, Aung San SuuKyi, is very prompt at accusing the Burmese military of human rights violations when she is under house arrest.  But she finds nothing wrong when the military helps the Buddhist mobs to murder the innocent Muslim minority of her country.
In June this year, she while speaking at London School of Economics meeting said "Rohingya Muslims should not be considered citizens."  This ‘peace lover’ lady didn’t even condemn the killings of Rohingya Muslims taking place in Burma.  Instead, she simply said that this "ethnic conflict should be investigated and dealt with wisdom."   It wasn't just an insufficient response but a very shocking one from someone supposed to have won a "Noble Peace Prize." Her support to the persecution of Muslims is going to contribute immensely to the dangerously growing Buddhist intolerance in Burma, Thailand, Tibet and across the world. 

Lastupdate on : Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 17 Aug 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:00:00 IST