Karan Thapar

The world is finally standing up for Aung San Suu Kyi

It may be an impossible task to restore Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation, but Burma’s generals have made a sterling effort this week, after they sentenced her to at least two years in jail.

This time last year Suu Kyi, a former Nobel peace prize winner, was a fallen icon. Her lack of sympathy and concern for the plight of Rohingyas in her country and, worse, her defence of the army’s brutal repression and massacres of them (she even appeared on the army’s behalf at the International Court of Justice in the Hague) had disillusioned her admirers. Many of the peace awards she received were revoked, including the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, Amnesty’s Ambassador of Conscience Award, South Korea’s Gwangju Human Rights Award and the City of London’s freedom of the city.

Even the second landslide victory Suu Kyi won last year did little to restore her standing. Instead it proved that she had sacrificed her principles and noble stance against Burma’s regime for electoral popularity. The world turned its back.

Then, in February, the generals acted. Accusing Suu Kyi of electoral fraud, they annulled the election results and removed her from power. In one stroke, ‘The Lady’, as the Burmese people reverentially call her, became the face of her country’s crushed democracy. That was enough for the world to once again focus on Suu Kyi.

The generals’ fear of Suu Kyi is far greater than the outside world realises

The generals, however, were not done. Their fear of Suu Kyi is far greater than the outside world realises. It has became apparent that they are not just threatened by her almost unshakeable hold on the Burmese people but they also live in dread of her political resurrection. They sense that even though she has spent a decade working alongside them, if restored, she would look for revenge.

So, over the last ten months, they’ve concocted 11 charges against her, which encompass the ludicrous, the unbelievable and even the impossible.

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