Myanmar has one of the longest histories of direct or indirect military rule. Ever since General Ne Win overthrew the government and took power in 1962 till 2011 the military used to directly rule the country. Its influence was very much there even after that year, though on paper Aung San Suu Kyi was the indirect ruler after her party, the National League for Democracy won the election held in November 2015 and again five years later in 2020.
However, on February 1 last the military once again took full power and started crushing even a little bit of democracy.
As Vietnam, Cambodia and to some extent Laos had been attracting more international attention till 1980 or even later, the authoritarian rule in the western-most country of Indo-China, that is Burma, as Myanmar was then called, could hardly get due media attention in those early years.
The military junta was always brutal in suppressing the people of the Buddhist-dominated country. The minority Rohingya Muslims were thrown out of the country in 1978 and 1991 as well. The latest crackdown started in August 2017. Yet the West in the initial years continued to overlook all these happenings and Burma largely remained an isolated country till late 1980s.
This was so notwithstanding the fact that U Thant had served as the third Secretary General of the United Nations between 1961 and 1971. He was a popular diplomat of his country after its independence on January 4, 1948 and was close to the first Prime Minister U Nu.
U Thant, for obvious reasons, remained in the US after the end of his second term and died in 1974.
Though Myanmar has mostly been under the influence of China after the first military takeover, it was after the collapse of the Soviet Union in early 1990s that the West started taking interest in Myanmar.
Just as in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, the West, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom, started talking about democracy in Myanmar when the situation suited them. Take the example of Arab Spring of 2011. The West took initial interest in getting rid of President Hosni Mubarak. But when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamad Morsi became the first elected President of any Arab country, the same West backed out. The US stooges in the region – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Bahrain – openly supported the military take-over in Egypt.
Throughout the Third World countries, the West has always been supporting tin-pot dictators and military rulers. They would champion the cause of democracy only after they get a suitable candidate for it.
No doubt Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent a lot of time in the United Kingdom, led a movement against the military but critics are of the view that she got Nobel Prize for Peace as early as in 1991 when, at that time, her contribution for the cause of democracy was hardly substantial. It was alleged that she got so much international attention because the West thought that she would be serving its interest in a better way. She was married to a British national, Michael Aris. The military made this also an excuse for not letting her occupy the top post in Myanmar.
So far as the Nobel Prize is concerned, Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation of India, never got it though his contributions to global peace cannot be matched by Suu Kyi.
Anyway, Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San, himself an army officer, who is considered the Father of the Nation of modern Burma. But he was assassinated on July 19, 1947, that is six months before the independence.
As Suu Kyi’s mother Khin Kyi was made Burma’s ambassador to India during the civilian rule in 1960, the former studied at Convent of Jesus and Mary School and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi before moving to England in 1964.
In late 1960s she had also worked in the United Nations. She got married in 1972.
The problem with Suu Kyi is that she remained a mute spectator towards the expulsion and massacre of Rohingyas. Even in some circles in the West, demand started growing that the Nobel Prize should be taken back because her stand on Rohingyas did not differ with that of the military junta.
Articles started appearing in the western Press, especially in The Guardian on how she let down the world by remaining silent on atrocities towards Rohingyas.
Thus, it is the rarest case when the demand was so powerfully raised to take back the Nobel Prize.
It must be her political compulsion or the general consensus among the people of Myanmar against Rohingyas which prompted Suu Kyi not to oppose the military on this count.
The history of this crisis can be traced back to the pre-independence period.
Like India, the then Burma was a part of the British empire. While the Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state had fought with the British army during World War-II, the Buddhists backed the invading Japanese army. Suu Kyi’s father Aung San was leading the fight against the British. It is another thing that Suu Kyi is now getting support from the same United Kingdom and other Western countries.
Rakhine is the western state which shared a common border with the then East Pakistan and later, after December 16, 1971, with Bangladesh.
Though the relationship between Rohingya Muslims and local Buddhists always remained uneasy, the large expulsion of the former started several years after the creation of Bangladesh. Rohingyas were stripped off their citizenship way back in 1982.
As China has much stake in Myanmar, the military is confident that it would overcome all the challenges – be it from Suu Kyi or Rohingyas. As in Pakistan in the west, Myanmar in the east and Sri Lanka in the south, China wants to increase its influence around India by using their ports for military and commercial purposes. So, China can now control all the sea lanes in the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal up to the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea to its coast.
Unlike five decades back, Myanmar today has acquired much strategic significance too. So, any development there cannot be seen in isolation. On its part, India too wants to boost up its road connectivity up to Vietnam. But this is not possible without passing through Myanmar.