Aung San Suu Kyi's silence about Rohingyas

Aung San Suu Kyi and Rohingyas

Very few of those who win the Nobel Peace Price, truly deserve it. Very few are like South Africa's Mandela. Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi is not a Mandela. With the people of Rohingya systematically being persecuted and terrorized, both by Mayanmar's regime and Buddhists there, she says that there is 'nothing she can do'. No one is asking her to back the Rohingyas or take sides; all that is being asked of/from her is to speak out strongly against what is being done to the Rohingyas in her country. She is being asked to speak out against such extreme injustice. She has no reasons or excuses not to speak out against such inhumanity and such a barbaric atrocity.

The people of Rohingya, the Muslims there, are being brutally forced out of their homes and lands. Their towns and villages are being torched and thousands of their homes are being burnt down. Many have been killed. Many of their women have been raped. Tens of thousands, in desperation, have been forced to flee to Bangladesh, Thailand or nearby islands where they feel safer but end up living in very wretched conditions. What is being done to the Rohingya people is ethnic cleansing. How horrifying has it to get for it to be termed 'genocide'? All this has been met with official indifference from Burma's regime. But, what is so shocking and very disappointing is Aung San Suu Kyi's silence.

There is no reason, except racism and prejudice, for what the Buddhist Burmese are doing against Rohingyas there. Racism and prejudice is what allowed hundreds of thousands of people to be mercilessly exterminated almost twenty years ago in Rwanda. If Aung San Suu Kyi can be silent about racism and prejudice; about such an injustice - in her own country then how can she be considered to be an advocate and a fighter for human rights, justice and peace?

Images: BBC