Aung San Suu Kyi at 80

Stop Whitewashing Rohingya Crimes

Outside the ICJ in The Hague, a roaming billboard confronts Aung San Suu Kyi’s legacy head-on: ‘Admit that it’s a genocide and seek refuge in the Netherlands.’ The street speaks the truth; the courtroom still weighs. 10 December 2019 (Photo: © Shafiur Rahman)

Aung San Suu Kyi turns 80 in just a few days, but the hagiography has already begun. Her supporters are busy collecting “80,000 birthday wishes,” framing her as Myanmar’s eternal heroine as she sits in prison. Against that tide of nostalgia, my new piece for DVB English asks an uncomfortable question: why are so many commentators still whitewashing her central role in the Rohingya genocide?

In 2017 Suu Kyi blocked UN investigators, echoed the Tatmadaw’s “clearance operation” talking points, and then flew to The Hague to defend the army - not its victims. Calling that an “act of survival” is historical fantasy. It was plain complicity. Her stance provided political cover while the military razed villages, carried out systematic rape, and killed thousands of Rohingya in a single month - atrocities every major rights body now brands genocidal. More than 700,000 survivors were driven into Bangladesh, stripped of land, property, and any hope of citizenship, consigned to a life without rights across the border.

Fergus Harlow’s trilogy of op-eds tries to spin those facts into a “Western-media witch-hunt,” blaming ARSA and recasting state-orchestrated slaughter as mere communal unrest. As Suu Kyi’s 80th approaches, we face a choice: join the birthday-cake amnesia, or stand with the survivors who still wait for justice ...