Friday, September 22, 2017

Aung San Suu Kyi: A Changed Nobel Peace Prize Laureate?



Even though most Nobel Peace Prize laureates went on to become nation-building peacemakers, is Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi fast becoming the exception? 

By: Ringo Bones 

During the last two decades of the 20th Century, many of us assumed that Nobel Peace Prize laureates – like South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu – are nation-building peacemakers. But for those of us old enough to remember those good old days where Nobel Peace Prize laureates went on to do great things within the path of peace that are still of geopolitical importance, it seems that the recent Myanmar Rohingya Muslim refugee crisis has tarnished everyone’s expectations of Aung San Suu Kyi – who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize back in 1991 – and was supposedly would have transitioned Myanmar into a civilian run democracy since her appointment as State Counselor (a position akin to a Prime Minister) just like what Mandela and Tutu had done to South Africa by ending Apartheid peacefully. 

For those closely following her political career since the end of her house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi’s “silence” over the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minorities in Myanmar might be explained due to her need to gain support from the majority Bamar ethnicity as she was in the middle of a general election campaign back in 2015. But as the violence committed against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims and their exodus into neighboring Bangladesh recently got worse and worse and with video evidence reminiscent of the notorious ethnic cleansing incidences of the Balkans back in the mid 1990s, Suu Kyi’s recent UN General Assembly speech which was tinged with “both sides are to blame” Trumpisms had made many to question if she still deserves her Nobel Peace Prize or might the Nobel Committee be allowed to strip her of her prized accolade due to her adopting an ineffectual stance when it comes to the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims.