Front Burner - Fall from grace: Aung San Suu Kyi defends Myanmar against genocide charge

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle for freedom and democracy in Myanmar. But now — as the current leader of her country — she's in The Hague, before the International Court of Justice, defending her regime against charges of genocide against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim population. Today, on Front Burner, Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign U.K., brings us the story of the violent attacks against the Rohingya and why a once-revered human rights icon is now being called an apologist for ethnic violence.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. For years, she was regarded as a global icon in the struggle for human rights and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. And what is more important, the Nobel Prize had drawn the attention of the world to the struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma. We were not going to be forgotten.

But now it seems Aung San Suu Kyi will be remembered for a very different legacy. Today, the state councillor and de facto leader of the country of Myanmar is in The Hague appearing before the International Court of Justice. And she's doing so to defend the military against accusations of genocide, mass rape, and mass murder against the country's Rohingya Muslim population. Mark Farmaner is the director of Burma Campaign UK.

He met Aung San Suu Kyi in 2012 before the current violence against the Rohingya people broke out. He joins me from our studios in London. And just to note here, there are some pretty graphic descriptions of violence in this conversation. Hi, Mark. Thanks so much for making the time to speak with us today. Thank you for inviting me. So Aung San Suu Kyi became the de facto leader of Myanmar in 2016 after a democratic opening up. And of course, for many, many years, she was this icon, this beacon for democracy and human rights.

Consider this. After a brief meeting. On behalf of my fellow Canadians, I'm very pleased to present this to you. A presentation of official Canadian citizenship. Aung San Suu Kyi is the only woman in the world bestowed this honour. I understand you met her back in 2012. What was your meeting like? It was actually, we were surprised, it was quite a difficult meeting. We were, Burma Campaign UK had been for many years one of the main organisations internationally that was supporting human rights in Burma, campaigning for her and her release.

We'd had directors in the past of our organization had met with her. But when we did finally get to meet with her after so many years under house arrest, we did find that we had some difficult discussions about ethnic and religious issues in the country, even then. And what happened? She was critical of the amount of work that we were doing on the rights of Burma's ethnic minorities. And that was the first thing that she raised with us aside from any other issues. And this was before the violence against the Rohingya in June 2012. Mob violence as two communities turn on each other. It started after a Buddhist woman was raped and murdered last month.

The Rohingya were blamed. The Myanmar government sent in the military to stop the fighting. The people in the community now say those soldiers failed to protect them. Instead, in some instances, they came after them. But we were still touching on issues to do with the Muslim minorities in the country. There had been some anti-Muslim riots in the country in 2012 and 2011, but they didn't receive any attention. And also on the other ethnic groups in the country where there's been conflict and where we tried to talk to her about some of the human rights violations committed by the Burmese military. And she was not interested in hearing it. She

didn't want to know about it. Why do you think that was the case? Well, I think we've come to see and understand now that she was much more of a sort of a Buddhist nationalist than we had ever realized. For all those years when she was struggling for human rights would hope to hear and what people in Burma hope to hear, which was respecting ethnic diversity and equality, human rights and freedoms. For Aung San Suu Kyi, forcible relocation is just one item on a long list of abuses. It shows that Burma is a country where individual freedom does not exist, where people can be made to go where they do not want to go by those who are in power. But it turned out that when she was saying these things,

she mainly seemed to have in mind the Burman Buddhist majority in the country rather than all of the people. And the majority of people in the country are Buddhist. About three quarters of the population roughly are Burman Buddhists. There are other ethnic minorities. Some of them are Buddhist, some of them are Christian. There's a big variety there. But she certainly sees Burma as a Burman Buddhist country,

not a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country. I would like to make the point that there are many moderate Muslims in Burma as a Burman Buddhist country, not a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country. I would like to make the point that there are many moderate Muslims in Burma who have been well integrated into our society. But these problems arose, and this is what the world needs to understand, that the fear is not just on the side of the Muslims, but on the side of the Buddhists as well. And in that she shares the view of the country that the military did, And in that she shares the view of the country that the military did, except the military saw all ethnic people as a threat and wanted to pursue what people in Burma call a policy of Burmanization, where they were not accepting any ethnic or religious diversity in the country. in making every effort to restore peace and stability and to promote harmony between the Muslim and Rakhine communities. We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence.

For those listening, can you tell me a little bit more about her story, sort of how she became this Nobel Prize winning human rights hero that many people are probably familiar with? Yeah, so Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San who led the independence movement in Burma. My colleagues and I have come to London in response to the invitation of His Majesty's government in order to discuss the constitutional questions of Burma, the demand of our people is complete independence. to the UK. And when her mother was ill, she returned to Burma to take care of her. And it coincided with when there was a student-led uprising in 1988, when there was huge protests

across the country against the military. Hundreds of thousands of Burmese roamed the streets in an explosion of national anger. Shortages of food and high prices triggered the unrest. Burma's hardline military government says 95 people have been killed in five days of rioting. Foreign diplomats put the number of dead at nearly 1,000. The students went to her as the daughter of Aung San, asking her to take on and lead that struggle, which she was initially reluctant to do, but she did do. She and others formed the National League for Democracy, a political party to oppose the military. And international pressure forced the military to hold elections in 1990, which her

party won by a landslide. And the military refused to accept the results of that and put her under house arrest. And she spent most of the next 20 years under house arrest until she was finally released at the end of 2010. You're now free, Dorsucci. You're people not. Right. And I mean, is it fair for me to say there are some incredibly harrowing moments in her story? Her husband died of cancer in 1999, and she did not go back to see him because she was worried that she wouldn't be able to come back into her country. country. They wanted to get rid of her because she was mobilizing and inspiring people to resist their rule. So she refused to leave the country to see him before he died. They would not let him visit her. She was not able to see her two sons for many, many years and was kept for a large period of time under house arrest in isolation in her home in Yangon in the capital.

As a politician you made a choice to stay in Burma and fight but every human being has moments of self-doubt. I've never had doubts about the fact that I chose my country and the cause in which I believed. Sometimes of course I worry about whether I did things the right way to do with our work. I'm hoping we can talk about the Rohingyas specifically now. Mark, why all this hatred towards this ethnic group? You know, I understand that much of the population of Myanmar thinks of them as illegal immigrants. Yeah, so the nationalists, the racists who are campaigning

against the Rohingya presence in the country argue that Rohingya are illegal immigrants, that they were originally Rohingya, were brought into the country during British colonialism. And for them, this was a time of humiliation for the country that it was under colonial rule. And so they're associating the Rohingya and other Muslims in the country as well with that time. that time, then more and more Rohingya have been illegally, like they call them Bengalis, that they're from Bangladesh, and that they have been illegally entering the country. Okay. And then I know for many people listening, the moment where this crisis made, you know, great international headlines would have been in 2017, when, of course, there were very violent crackdowns against this group.

Dean Mohammed says, they were firing in my area and even called us out from our home and then slit my father's throat. And what do we know about what happened then? Well, what happened then, this is what the UN has said is genocide. UN investigators have called this genocide. And what they've described is that there was a lot that went on into the preparation of that, that it didn't come out of the blue. That after this first violence against the Rohingya in 2012, the military really, they realised that they could capitalise on this. They wanted to use nationalism and anti-Muslim prejudice to try and undermine

Aung San Suu Kyi politically ahead of elections that would be coming up in 2015. They seized on this as an opportunity to whip up public support for them as a very unpopular military that most people in the country had hated. And they took a series of steps against the Rohingya. They wouldn't allow the Rohingya to take part in a census. They increased humanitarian restrictions against the Rohingya. They didn't let them take part in the elections. A whole series of measures where even they would refuse to speak to diplomats if they called Rohingya, Rohingya. And unfortunately, the international community backed down every time. They'd said they wouldn't lift sanctions unless the situation of the Rohingya improved, but they lifted sanctions even though it was getting worse.

And so, in effect, they greenlit the Rohingya. The military-backed government at the time got the impression that it didn't really matter what they did to Rohingya. The international community would look the other way because of the so-called reform process, the democratic transition that was going on at the time. Right, the Americans lifted sanctions starting in 2012, I believe. Following the recent parliamentary elections, Washington is extending both congratulations and encouragement to do more.

The United States is committed to taking steps alongside the Burmese government and people as they move down the road of reform and development. Yes, and the EU suspended its sanctions in 2012 and also said that they would review that in 2013 and continue the suspension as long as the certain human rights conditions had been met, including an improvement of the situation of the Rohingya. In that year, there were two waves of violence against the Rohingya and the sanctions were lifted anyway. And the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi told me by telephone

she supported the lifting of sanctions. I do not think that we should link the economic sanctions to the violence, which has a lot to do with rule of law and with other social political problems. And so that encouraged the military to believe they could get away with which has a lot to do with rule of law and with other social political problems. And so that encouraged the military to believe they could get away with what they'd wanted to do for decades. They'd wanted to drive the Rohingya out for decades. Since 1982, they'd been, you know, they stripped away their right to citizenship. They they've been persecuting them, making them.

They had a policy of basically using a combination of deliberate impoverishment and human rights violations to try to drive the Rohingya out. But they got to a point in 2016 when there was a Rohingya group that took up arms. They attacked some police stations. Shortly after the attacks on border police, this video of a group armed Rohingya appeared online. The government says they are foreign-trained terrorists. Rohingya leaders say they are frustrated local people. And the military had a very violent response. They drove around 80,000 Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh, committed horrific human rights violations. Even the UN documented how they'd killed babies. They'd burned people alive in their homes. So they did this in October 2016.

This is when this first military offensive against the Rohingya took place. And there was no reaction from the international community at all. No response, no sanctions, even military training programs with the Burmese military carried on. So the military then began planning for a much larger campaign to drive more Rohingya out, and they waited for the next attack from this Rohingya armed group, which finally came in August the following year, and they were ready.

They'd already brought troops into the state, troops that had been committing exactly the same sort of human rights violations against other ethnic people in the country. They had the equipment ready. The plan was ready, and as soon as these attacks took place, they moved with what they called a counterterrorism clearance operation. Right. This was all in the name of counterterrorism, right? Yes, but this was a pre-planned systematic attempt to drive Rohingya out of Rakhine State and out of the country.

And they did so with more than 700,000 Rohingya being forced to flee the country. When the military attacked, Ramzan Ali and his uncle hid for seven days, surviving on banana tree stems and leaves. Then they walked for eight days. It is only once they cross into Bangladesh that there is any relief. And also, I believe this is when the United High Commissioner for Human Rights called this a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. There were stories of babies being thrown in wells, of women being raped, of villages being burned to the ground. Yes, the human rights violations that have been committed, the fact-finding mission was set up by the United Nations. It's full of case studies that are verified by international experts in human rights and international law.

And it's very harrowing.'s it's very hard to read and i've spoken with lawyers who've interviewed the survivors who are in bangladesh who said they've worked on the rwanda genocide they interviewed people after that they've worked in on bosnia but they've never ever interviewed people with the sort of the high level of the number of those refugees who had personally witnessed human rights violations, the scale of those violations and just the intensity that they'd never seen anywhere else in the world in the work that they had been doing. The border guards introduced us to Anjuara Bega. Of her four children, only one remains. Two are missing. The other, she says, thrown into a fire by Burmese soldiers.

They snatched my three-month-old baby and turned him to ash. This was a deliberate attempt by the Burmese military to inflict terror. They were deliberately using rape. They were lining up children and executing them, lining up villagers, forcing people to watch as their parents were executed, forcing parents to watch as their children are executed, and then releasing them to run so that they would spread the word so that the terror would spread and people would flee. We've got reports of a woman who was being raped. Her baby was hungry,

crying next to her. The soldier stamping on the baby to shut it up because it was crying while they were. It is unbelievable. A woman who was giving birth while at the time that the Burmese military attacked the village and again killing her, killing the baby as it was born, stamping on her stomach while the baby was coming out. The horror of what has been experienced. And this is what Aung San Suu Kyi has been denying. She has a sign up on her website and her Facebook page which says fake rape, that these claims are all false. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Aung San Suu Kyi, her persistent calls for reform, one respect abroad and an honorary Canadian citizenship, but now she's lost both. I don't care about the prizes and honors as such. I'm sorry that friends are not as steadfast as they might be

because I think friendship means understanding. I know today she's in The Hague. She's representing Myanmar at the International Court of Justice. And so what is the country being accused of and how is she defending herself here? This is one of three international legal cases that Burma is facing now, as others are the universal jurisdiction case in Argentina and international criminal court investigation.

This one at the International Court of Justice is brought by Gambia, who are saying they brought a dispute out with Burma saying that they have broken the genocide convention, that they are in breach of the terms in the fact that they are committing genocide, they have failed to prevent genocide, they failed to hold those accountable. Right. 22 years of a brutal dictatorship has taught us to use our voice in condemnation of the oppression of others. I saw genocide within all over these stories. They did sign on to this convention many, many decades ago. Yes. So Burma is a sign on to this convention many many decades ago. Yes so Burma is a signatory to this convention although the the International Court of

Justice it cannot try individuals who are responsible so it's it's a mechanism for settling disputes between states so officially is the state that is accused not the head of the military or the military as an institution. What do you think could stem from this tribunal hearing? I think for the Rohingya to have the crimes against them acknowledged is really important. So if there is a ruling from the court that this is genocide, then they will be very pleased to have that happen. But I think what the Rohingya and other ethnic people are already saying is, we've won either way. Win or lose in this case, we've won either way, because for the first time ever, the military are in court

for their crimes. And they've never faced this kind of attention and scrutiny before. And that is going to make them think twice before they do something like this again. So win or lose, the mere fact that this case is happening will probably save a lot of lives. So it's a success in of itself as well. But after, you know, depending on what the ruling is, I mean, if this goes against Burma, the first step that the court is likely to make is going to make recommendations of what it thinks that the government of Burma should do. So, for example, to give the Rohingya citizenship to allow them back in safety. It can make recommendations for a range of things, as well as making a determination of whether or not this is genocide. The court, his first thing, is considering those steps because Gambier is arguing that this isn't, as the UN fact-finding mission who investigated this

is saying it's an ongoing genocide, it's not over yet. Our report characterizes the recent events in Rakhine State as a human rights catastrophe that was foreseeable and planned, one that will have severe impact for many generations to come, if not forever. And so they are calling for immediate steps that the International Court of Justice can call on the government of Burma to do. And so Aung San Suu Kyi will be faced with a choice then because she can ignore that. And she, you know, if she ignores it, the International Court of Justice, it can't sort of implement its findings in the same way that the International Criminal Court can issue an arrest warrant. It will then go to the UN Security Council and Aung San Suu Kyi can take comfort that Russia and China will likely veto any resolution trying to compel the government of Burma to do anything. Yes, I suppose this is sort of what I was getting at.

China said it was an internal issue. Russia said the report of the mission was biased and unreliable, even though it runs to 440 pages of searing testimony. So that would be one possible outcome. But she could look at it another way, that all of what she hoped for in her country is being undermined by this mindless hatred of the Rohingya. She wants to see economic development. She wants to see a democratic transition.

She wants to see peace in the country. All of her priorities that she discussed are being undermined by this Rohingya issue. Right. And it would be an opportunity for her to say to the people in Burma look I did my best I went to this court but you know we lost here they've ruled that we've got to give Rohingya citizenship we've got to do these things and so we're going to do them we have to just you know we just have to go with it and that would be a way that perhaps she can you know that she can actually try to argue to the people of Burma

that we've done our best, but we're going to have to do this. We must do this because of this ruling. There is also the belief she's still the best place to lead. This Burmese Muslim served on another commission on Rakhine State. She has made a lot of errors. She has made a lot of blunder. But show me a person who can take her place for our democratic goal. She is our only chance.

That would be a sensible tactical approach, but I think she is very stubborn. That's what kept her going all those years under house arrest. And she's very prejudiced as well. And so I think she is know, she is one of the people that has been whipping up, her government has been whipping up this anti-Muslim, anti-Rohingya tensions in the country since she's been in government using the state-controlled media and Facebook pages from her own office to whip up these fears. So she's kind of, she's

created an environment where it makes it harder and harder for her to make any concessions and actually back down to any international pressure. Mark, thank you very much for this. Thank you. So as Mark and I talked about, Aung San Suu Kyi will be in the courtroom at the International Court of Justice today as the hearing begins, but she is scheduled to address the court herself on Wednesday. We're going to be following this and we'll let you know of any significant updates. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and see you all tomorrow.