Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Lady, many call her “the Mother” with utmost reverence. For others, she was responsible for atrocities, particularly those committed against the Rohingyas. The pro-military camp claims her of promoting foreign and Islamic (including Rohingyas) interests at the expense of the Buddhists. A lot of views on her seem to be black-and-white and personally, we think this monolithic lens is harmful in understanding Myanmar’s politics. Regardless of whether a person likes or dislikes her, the indisputable fact is that she is the number one most well-known figure in Myanmar, and under a democratic system (even if you were to accuse the democratic electoral process of a popularity contest), it proved time and time again that no one would beat her at a nationwide election. Attempts to ignore her or get rid of her influence would be ignoring the majority voice of the people of Myanmar.
In analyzing her it would be misleading to draw her image in the narratives that ignore wider context, especially when specific narratives at times are contradictory. While Schrodinger’s Cat’s mention of a hypothetical cat that’s simultaneously alive and dead at the same time was intended to make his point in a thought experiment, it would be absurd to say she both committed genocide against the Rohingyas and promoted the interests of the Rohingyas and Muslims at the expense of Buddhists at the same time.
In this essay, we seek to analyze her legacy based on what could be publicly observed. We believe that for all the talks about her having good or bad intentions, these proved hard to observe unless we were stationed near her for an extended period and conducted a thorough good quality qualitative research. However, the outcomes are far more easily observable and relevant to the well-being of the people.
In viewing the legacy of her administration, we believe that it is important to look at the impacts at the national scale as well as in specific communities. At the national level, the socio-economic data over her administration shows positive results in income and life expectancy to education and healthcare attainment. Regarding the question about what could have been had she continued, the World Bank’s Myanmar Economic Monitor released this month provided a glimpse. In an alternative future where the coup has not happened, an average Myanmar national would be 55.56% richer in 2024 compared to the current grim reality[1]. Even without such a study, the sight of people queuing for rice, and cooking oil and patients waiting for death due to a shortage of medicines portray a picture of what went wrong.
Figure: Myanmar Economic Monitor, June 2024, the World Bank
However, it is also true that conflicts sparked in pockets of the country during her administration and many of the development gains reflected nationwide proved elusive for populations of these areas. Yet, even when we look at conflict areas and the affected populace, the scope, scale, and intensity during her administration and post-coup are beyond compare. Having said that, it was also in handling the conflict situations where she got most blamed, particularly in the most well-known episode of conflict in the Rohingya genocide.
It is also her involvement in the Rohingya genocide that she became Schrodinger’s Aung San Suu Kyi and the way we see it, while it remains impossible to say whether she wanted to cause harm to the Rohingyas, according to the constitution, she had no authority to order the military to stage attacks or to stop attacking. Simply put, while her motives were unclear, she had no means to start or to stop. Despite her lack of means, her dazzling reputation draws massive attention to her. Consequently, as the world riled at her, Min Aung Hlaing and various political actors could take advantage of her popularity to further their agenda after putting the blame on her. While she is not entirely faultless, many observers these days forget other facts such as her party rejecting a proposal in parliament by Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Arakan National Party (ANP) for military intervention, (after the rejection) these MPs going towards Min Aung Hlaing to push for military campaigns against the Rohingyas[2] and how Min Aung Hlaing only inform her of the planned operations[3]. The following is from a news article covering a meeting between ANP and Min Aung Hlaing, Dr. Aye Maung, Chairman of ANP:
“Aye Maung, chairman of the Arakan National Party (ANP), which represents the interests of the state’s ethnic Rakhine people, said the lawmakers and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing discussed security issues in the northern part of the state and what to do about internally displaced persons (IDP) who live in camps in Rakhine.
“We planned to submit a proposal to the lower house and upper house [of parliament] regarding the security situation in Rakhine state, but it was rejected,” he told the online news service the Democratic Voice of Burma.
“So, we decided to approach the Tatmadaw,” Aye Maung said, using the formal name of Myanmar’s armed forces.”
And the rest is a bloody history.
Having mentioned how other people used her to further their agendas, she was not entirely perfect in handling the situation. If one soldier killed civilians, the blame would lie with that soldier. If the military covered up his killings, the blame would be extended to the military institution. However, if the majority of the citizenry supported the military in the campaigns that killed civilians, the blame would lie with the citizens. For her part, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was responsible for making the people of Myanmar support these military campaigns during her administration. Having a massively devoted following required her to treat every action with the utmost care, and her failure led to the “We stand with Aung San Suu Kyi” campaigns, which now brought shame to the entire country.
In hindsight, once the Min Aung Hlaing’s killing machine began rolling, there is nothing she could have done to stop it. Trying to stop could even result in the coup coming earlier and post-2021’s wider and deeper humanitarian crisis at the national level coming earlier. However, she made a miscalculation publicly defending the military thinking that doing so would make the military become cooperative and amend their ways. And she had to pay for her miscalculations with her reputation and unraveling of all the development gains. In allegations of her involvement in genocide, while many vocally accuse her of committing the genocide, she is no Hitler, or rather she has no means to be a Hitler. However, with her appeasement policies, she could be a Chamberlain[4] to Min Aung Hlaing’s genocidal Hitler. While Chamberlain could be blamed for making a strategic failure, that’s a completely different matter from the crimes of Hitler.
In this article, in analyzing her legacy, we only examine the mere surface of just one well-known issue, i.e. the Rohingya genocide, to better understand the circumstances she faced and the choices she made. We could go on lengths discussing this issue alone, and there are a lot more policies and choices she made and allegations she faced during her time. In time, we hope to look deeper into these issues. But for now, what can be easily observed is that post-coup poverty, oppression, and conflicts mean the future becoming a lot darker for her, the Rohingyas, and everyone in Myanmar alike.
[1] https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099061124195517221/p5006631cca59607d182041fae76ab566cc
[2] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/rakhine-lawmakers-meet-with-myanmars-military-chief-to-discuss-security-crisis-08102017161757.html
[3] https://ijbs.online/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/IJBS12021-Militarization-in-Northern-Rakhine-State-How-Who-and-Why.pdf
[4] Prime Minister of UK between 1937 – 1940, his appeasement policies were often viewed as making Hitler bolder and more powerful until the WW2 becomes closer to reality
