May Aung Sun Suu Kyi find REAL HOPE in Burma
This interview was undertaken a year ago. It feels like a good place to start to assess the situation for Aung Sun Suu Kyi. Clearly today the Rohingya are facing genocide. Why do people wish to exterminate a people? They are seeing them as a threat.
REAL HOPE (s) is from my universal values work – Responsibility, Empathy, Awareness, Love, Honesty, Oneness, Peace, Enjoyment and Service. This is what Aung Sun Suu Kyi in my view must focus on behind the scenes. It is to meditate and find the stillness to allow the truth to arise to give her a feel for how to navigate this quagmire of smoke and mirrors. She is not working along the same lines as other peacemakers, she is different in her approach, her situation very difficult. But my feeling is her staying alive, staying present maintains a semblance of reasoned hope even despite the belief around the world that people are losing hope in her. I think if she is gone, then the people of Burma will definitely lose all hope as the military are brutal, they are the equivalent to Pol Pot in that human life has zero value.
I just had a listen to this interview. She is incredibly brave. How many of us could live with potential assassination every day? Certainly the people of Burma do. They never feel safe or resolved. She is in a difficult situation in respect of the military and its control using brutal methods. She indicates the desire to empower the people to resolve problems. This is because there is ethnic tension towards the Burmese given ethnic groups. They resent being told. I can see she is trying to change the Constitution to weaken the military. This would be wise. There may be legal reasons why she doesn’t acknowledge genocide given her leadership position and the reality of the violence of the military. I am not sure. It is incredibly dangerous. I don’t know enough about the reality on the ground, I am writing this from my own inner feeling.
I have been to South East Asia on the border of Burma and I saw both the good and the bad. Some of the people I met were very corrupt, I cannot imagine how she can work with them on a day to day basis. She must be driven by such a vision to bring democracy or to somehow make small gains for the people. I am sure she is practical. You can’t just make statements to stop this, there is a matrix around this situation that involves other governments, the drug lords, religious vested interests and so on. It is probably one of the most complicated disputes.
It is easy for others outside of her circle to criticise her for not condemning the attacks on the Rahingya and I understand why they want this. However, this type of murder has been going on for decades and for her it is not new. She knows the military and what they are doing. Genocide in Burma has happened with other ethnic groups. I met with Karen and they too were going through systematic murder by the military. I met the backpacking doctors and teachers who tried to teach Karen children so they don’t lose their culture. I was told how they were brutalised in the jungles. It was so dangerous. The Karen Liberation Army were protecting civilians. So I am under no illusion of the task she has as a peacemaker. People look for someone to blame when they feel despairing. Perhaps their sorrow is that they placed such hope in her and need to believe in someone. They hold her in this high esteem like Gandhi was but the reality on the ground is much harder. Many faceless faces behind the scenes attacking this vulnerable country and its people.
I feel for the same situation of Afghanistan where outsiders have vested interests. Whenever war or instability happens you notice the drug trade and there are intelligence agencies involved in this who profit. There are governments engaged in the arms industry not the peace industry so we can see the dynamics or the scales are not balanced in favour of peace, not enough money in that. I note the intelligence community were involved in killing her senior adviser, he was killed with his child in his arms. Imagine the child’s psyche knowing the parent is killed, imagine the trauma for this child, symbolic of many children witnessing murder. A woman from Sudan told me ‘they are killing the children’. This type of brutality has no limits, there is no Geneva Convention here. It is the law of tooth and claw playing out. Imagine how other members in the National League for Democracy feel. Although they have been through so many killings. Aung Sun Suu Kyi under house arrest for decades. The world has this romance of perceived heroes but she would never place herself there. This is a very difficult time for her as others seek to destroy her through public opinion, that is what darkness does or what psychologist term – the shadow. That is how easily manipulated the world community is. The media jumps on the bandwagon killing off democracy in Burma. I always look for signs of peace, I see it in unifying statements not ones that divide. I see it in truth tellers, not those who seek to control public opinion, engaging in mind control. When we are urged to hate you can be sure propaganda is at play.
It was Jeshua Ben Joseph who stated: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
This is another country trying to find peace but enslaved by violent men who do not want to give up power. I am definitely not in judgement of her, I sit and watch moved by an inner feeling to speak out as I feel she requires support not criticism.
If the world doesn’t like what is going on with Syria, with Sudan, with Burma and the many other countries suffering under brutal dictators then act. As I mentioned in another blog, give power to an International Criminal Court to be able to arrest leaders who are corrupt, violent and brutal to their citizens. This is bullying and totalitarianism. There has to be concerted international action to intervene together with non-government agencies and International Peace Forces of citizens. The failure globally has been to come together and resolve conflict, this is a major issue facing this planet. We need to establish Departments of Conflict Resolution as a real imperative. Defence just arms against other aggressors, conflict resolution seeks to resolve problems at the root and build cultures of peace. Aung Sun Suu Kyi is more in alignment with this seeking to empower people, she believes in harmony. This is how the feminine works, the masculine thinks to kill or scare off others will bring peace, it won’t.
I know the UN has gone in with the blue helmets in the past but they too have lost credibility given corruption and ineffectiveness leveled at them given the bureaucracy, the US failure to fund the UN and other interests influencing the UN Security Council. Ethically we are not seeing statespeople who have integrity, they seem to be influence by money and power, this is the core issue. We have to instil global values.
There has to be concerned global action from the citizens of the world to create some form of intervention into countries where people are brutally oppressed. Or to find ways to impress on them it will not serve them. Like the bully some will not respond to peace gestures or will lie to stave off criticism. It is in the interests of the tyrant to stop them. It is in the interests of the people to stop tyrants. It is in the interests of the world community to know that criminality, illegal behaviour will be stopped by governance in the world. If people see they themselves are part of the problem then they lose faith in their leaders. I believe that is happening.
Companies have to have a code of ethics where they don’t fund them with weapons, equipment, supply lines etc. They have to say no. The drug trade is another factor, Singapore right in there supporting this. This has to be seen as a war crime. When we choose to create peace it will happen but until we can choose a higher way we will continue to create global misery just to maintain or expand someone’s wealth. Is this the world we want?
Here is a World Report for 2018. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/201801world_report_web.pdf (see page 98 for Burma)
A YouTube interview is posted below:
Key points from the interview with the BBC are as follows:
BBC: Achievements…
Aung: all weather roads a achievement. Still work to do on peace. Military matters left to the army (part of peace deal), trying to change the Constitution, amending is one of our aims. Cease fire agreements one of the last steps is to adopt a Federal constitution….South Africans did end apartheid, we hope it will be no more than a few years (there are considerable ethnic tensions in Burma given the diversity, they have historical roots)
BBC – There have been advances in health care, free elections, overshadowed by Rakhine State. Aung Sun Suu Kyi is condemned in respect of the Rohingya. Changed how she is seen, condemned.
Aung: What are they condemning over the last year?
BBC – Many, even those sympathetic, why not spoken out? Icon of human rights
Aung: What do you mean, question asked since 2013 when last round of troubles broke out in Rakhine. People say I said nothing, I didn’t make the kind of statements they think I should make.
BBC: They say you failed the test of humanities
one of the first things we started to do when took over administration, national verification process, give citizenship, other development activities to bring about stability and harmony, problems in Rakhine due to resources are limited, anxious about their lives. October totally unexpected attacks on police outposts, no reason we could think of. started citizenship identification (nationality) process, bring people out of IDP camps, went array, don’t know why attacks took place. People ignore the fact this has happened at all.
BBC: allow fact finding, international agencies.
Aung: We invited Kofi Annan, not because any other body insisted. We asked him to form this commission, to help us to find long term solutions.
BBC: Appeal to those in Bangladesh to come back.
Aung: If they come back they will be safe. We try to find out why they fled, it was the fighting, we will welcome them back. Those who have come back are welcomed.
BBC: Do you worry you will be remembered as the champion of human rights, the nobel laureate who failed to stand up to ethnic cleansing.
Aung: I don’t think there is ethnic cleansing. Lot of hostility. Muslim’s killing Muslims. People on different sides of a divide we are trying to close up, not to widen it further.
BBC: Mohatma Gandhi put his own safety at risk to try and protect the minority Muslim population.
Aung: I don’t think putting one’s life at risk is an example I would like to follow. I’d like to think we could live up to his high principles.
BBC: What stop you now to go to Rakhine State and talking to all communities and appealing for peace.
Aung: I want to give those who are working on the Rakhine a chance to show they are capable of it, not enough confience in what our people are capable of doing.
BBC: situation is volatile an assassin moves up to Aung SanSuu Kyi’s top advisers he was shot dead. He was helping to draft changes to the Constitution. Elements i military intelligence are amongst those suspected of organising the attack. Aung San Suu Kyi was criticised for waiting a month to speak about his death. Called him a martyr
BBC: People who don’t want you to change the Constitution, those embedded in military and intelligence target you and the people around you.
Aung: It is not something I think about, asked same set of questions over 30 years. Worried about assassination, dangers, coming from the past. .. You don’t think about it on a day to day basis. Part of the job.