Democracy in

Myanmar’s resistance icon is off to a rocky start as she embraces a new role as party boss in a fragile democracy. Suu Kyi’s precarious pivot

By Andrew R.C. Marshall NAYPYITAW, october 5, 2012

CAREER SHIFT: Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi was a living symbol of resistance to military dictatorship during her years of house arrest. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

SPECIAL REPORT 1 Democracy in myanmar Suu Kyi’s precarious pivot

obel Peace Prize winner is making a career Nchange, from icon of liberty op- posing Myanmar’s junta to party boss in a fragile new quasi-democracy. The transition hasn’t been easy. At a talk in London in June, a student from the Kachin ethnic minority asked why Suu Kyi (a majority Burman) seemed reluctant to condemn a bloody government military offensive against Kachin rebels. The conflict has displaced some 75,000 people. Suu Kyi’s answer was studiously neutral: “We want to know what’s happening more clearly before we condemn one party or the other.” The Kachin community was livid. The Kachinland News website called her reply an “insult.” Kachin protesters gathered outside her next London event. An “open letter” from 23 Kachin groups worldwide said Suu Kyi was “condoning state-sanctioned violence.” That a woman so widely revered should ROCK STAR: Suu Kyi autographing the blouse of a student in the new parliament building in the arouse such hostility might have seemed capital Naypyitaw. Fans flock her almost wherever she goes.REUTERS/So e Seya Tun unthinkable back in April. A landslide by- election victory propelled Suu Kyi and 42 other members of her National League for REUTERS TV while under house arrest. Democracy into Myanmar’s parliament. “I do not know,” said Suu Kyi. Her ram- Not anymore. Once idolized without ques- See the video on bling answer nettled both the Rohingya, prisoner to politician: tion for her courageous two-decade stand http://link.reuters.com/kub87s who want recognition as Myanmar citizens, against the old junta, Suu Kyi now faces a and the locals in Rakhine, who regard them chorus of criticism even as she emerges as a as invaders. The reply contrasted with the powerful lawmaker here. most urgent humanitarian issues: the fate of moral clarity of her Nobel speech, in which She has quickly become an influential 800,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims in re- she had spoken about “the uprooted of the voice in the country’s newly empowered mote western Myanmar. There, clashes with earth ... forced to live out their lives among parliament. Still, ethnic groups accuse her ethnic Rakhine Buddhists have killed at least strangers who are not always welcoming.” of condoning human-rights abuses by fail- 77 people and left 90,000 homeless since June. STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY ing to speak out on behalf of long-suffering Spurned by both Myanmar and neigh- peoples in Myanmar’s restive border states. bouring Bangladesh, which hosts 300,000 Suu Kyi’s moral clarity helped make the Economists worry that her bleak public ap- refugees, many Rohingya live in appalling former junta a global pariah. Her new role praisals of Myanmar’s business climate will conditions in Rakhine State. The United Na- as political party leader demands strategic scare foreign investors. Political analysts say tions has called the Muslim minority “virtual- ambiguity as well. She must retain her ap- her party has few real policies beyond the ly friendless” in Buddhist-dominated Myan- peal to the majority Burmans and Bud- statements of its world-famous chairper- mar. The violence erupted in June, days before dhists, without alienating ethnic minorities son. She must also contend with conflict Suu Kyi’s first trip to Europe in 24 years. or compatriots of other faiths. She must within the fractious democracy movement “Are the Rohingya citizens of your also engage with the widely despised mili- she helped found. country or are they not?” a journalist asked tary, which remains by far the most domi- International critics have seized upon her Suu Kyi in Norway, after she collected the nant power in Myanmar. ambiguous response to one of Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991 Her political instincts have been appar-

SPECIAL REPORT 2 Democracy in myanmar Suu Kyi’s precarious pivot

OPPOSITION LEADER: Suu Kyi striding the halls of parliament, where she quickly emerged as an influential voice.REUTERS/So e Zeya Tun

ent to Myanmar watchers since 1988, when she returned after spending much of her A family of destiny and tragedy life abroad. Amid a brutal military crack- down, she emerged as leader of the democ- A month before Aung San Suu Kyi was born, forgot that she was the daughter of Burma’s racy movement. She spent most of the next on June 19, 1945, her family moved into a national hero, Aung San.” two decades in jail or house arrest and yet two-story mansion near ’s Kandawgyi Suu Kyi returned to Yangon in 1988 to remained the movement’s inspiration. Lake. Built on a small hill, it resembles the nurse her dying mother and was swept up in a “I don’t like to be referred to as an icon, house from Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, but with a pro-democracy uprising against military rule. because from my point of view, icons just sit real-life history of horror. Soldiers crushed it, and Suu Kyi spent most of there,” she said in a lecture on September An older brother drowned in the garden the next 21 years imprisoned in her own home. 27 at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Gov- pond, while a younger sister died in infancy. Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer ernment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then, in July 1947, six months before his in 1997 and, refused a visa by the junta, “I have always seen myself as a politician. country gained independence from the died without seeing his wife again. Visits by What do they think I have been doing for British, her father, General Aung San, was Alexander and Kim were also stopped. the past 24 years?” assassinated. He was 32. Suu Kyi was two. Kim, now 35, was reunited with his Suu Kyi declined multiple interview re- After the assassination, the government mother soon after her release from house quests from Reuters for this article. granted the family land on the shore of arrest in 2010. Alexander, 39, lives in Myanmar’s reforms have accelerated nearby Inya Lake. Suu Kyi grew up at this Washington State, but didn’t see Suu Kyi since she was freed from house arrest in now-famous address: 54 University Avenue. during her whirlwind U.S. trip. November 2010, days before an election She was educated in Delhi and Oxford, Nor did her estranged brother Aung San stage-managed by the military installed a where she met and later married Michael Oo, now a U.S. citizen living in San Diego. quasi-civilian government. This year, it has Aris, a Tibet scholar. They had two children, They have fought a 12-year legal battle over freed dissidents, eased media censorship and Alexander and Kim, and for the next 15 years the house on University Avenue. A Yangon started tackling a dysfunctional economy. she was an Oxford housewife. court in June awarded Aung San Oo a half- Myanmar’s emergence from authoritarian- Since childhood, Suu Kyi had been share in the two-acre property, but Suu Kyi’s ism is often compared to the Arab Spring. Yet “deeply preoccupied with the question of lawyers said she will appeal. its historic reforms were ushered in not by de- what she might do to help her people,” stabilizing street protests, but by former gener- Aris wrote in 1991. “She never for a minute Andrew R.C. Marshall

SPECIAL REPORT 3 Democracy in myanmar Suu Kyi’s precarious pivot

als such as President Thein Sein. out of their huts to cheer for “Mother Suu.” She is also adapting to life in Naypyitaw, Suu Kyi’s role was pivotal. A meeting Kawhmu’s problems - household debt, the isolated new capital built from scratch by she held with Thein Sein in the capital of lack of electricity, joblessness - are Myan- the junta, where she lives in a house protect- Naypyitaw in August 2011 marked the mar’s writ small. “Some villages around here ed by a fence topped with razor wire. In the start of her pragmatic engagement with a have no young people,” says Aung Lwin Oo, Lower House of parliament, the colourful government run by ex-soldiers. She pro- 45, a carpenter and member of the National garb worn by many ethnic delegates lends a nounced him “sincere” about reforming League for Democracy. “They have all left to festive atmosphere. Sitting near Suu Kyi is Myanmar, an endorsement that paved the work in Thailand and Malaysia.” an MP from Chin State who wears a head- way for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary dress of boar’s teeth and hornbill feathers. UNGLAMOROUS WORK Clinton’s visit to Naypyitaw last Novem- Men in green uniforms, however, domi- ber and, earlier this year, the scrapping of Suu Kyi’s first stop that day was the Bud- nate one side of the chamber. Myanmar’s most Western sanctions. dhist monastery. There, she prayed with the constitution, ratified after a fraudulent A saint-like reputation for unwaver- monks and met representatives from two referendum in 2008, reserves a quarter of ing principle can be unhelpful in politics, villages to settle a money dispute. Then parliamentary seats for military personnel a murky world of compromise and nego- she ate lunch with NLD members at a chosen by armed forces chief Gen. Min tiation. So can adulation, which generates tin-roofed wooden bungalow - the party’s Aung Hlaing, a protege of the retired dic- expectations that not even Myanmar’s “hu- Kawhmu headquarters - and discussed tator, Than Shwe. man rights superstar” - as Amnesty Inter- drainage issues with local officials. Suu Kyi’s mere presence in parliament national calls her - can fulfill. Her new job is unglamorous, but aides breathes legitimacy into a political system Suu Kyi realizes this. “To be criticised and say she relishes it. “She enjoys political life,” built by the junta that jailed her. Her party attacked is an occupational hazard for politi- said Win Tin, an NLD elder and long-time has reversed many long-cherished posi- cians. To be praised and idealized is also an confidant. “She enjoys it to the utmost.” tions to get here. occupational hazard and much the less desir- The NLD boycotted both the constitu- able of the two.” She wrote that 14 years ago. To be criticised and attacked tion-drafting process and the 2010 elec- Today, she regularly visits her parlia- is an occupational hazard for tion. That vote was rigged in favour of the mentary district of Kawhmu, a small and politicians. To be praised and military-backed Union Solidarity and De- impoverished rice-growing area near the idealized is also a hazard... velopment Party, now the ruling party and commercial capital Yangon. On a recent the NLD’s main electoral rival. Suu Kyi’s morning, as she was driven in an SUV along Aung San Suu Kyi camp also demanded that the military rec- Kawhmu’s potholed roads, villagers spilled Myanmar opposition leader ognize the results of a 1990 election, which the NLD won easily but the junta nullified. Her party abandoned these stances to take part in April’s by-elections. It now holds less than a tenth of the lower house seats, but Suu Kyi ensures the NLD punch- es above its weight. She led opposition to a higher educa- tion bill that she deemed substandard; it was scrapped in July and will now be redrafted by legislators. She also helped kill a clause in a foreign-investment law that would have protected Myanmar’s crony businessmen. In August she was named chair of a 15-member parliamentary committee on “rule of law and tranquility,” which could further amplify her influence. ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL: Suu Kyi discussing irrigation issues with officials in her constituency of Her star power has limits, however. Re- Kawhmu in southern Myanmar. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun forming the constitution to dial back the

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military’s influence remains an NLD prior- with local officials accusing their leaders of Chronology: Aung ity. That requires three-quarters support in being bossy or unresponsive. At least five parliament, including from some military members were suspended for disobeying or San Suu Kyi’s recent delegates - a daunting task even for Suu Kyi. protesting against the party leadership. political career “She is very persuasive,” said Ohn Kya- Suu Kyi heads a seven-member Central ing, NLD party spokesman and member Executive Committee which, past and pres- of parliament. But “without the military’s ent NLD members say, effectively rubber- Nov 13 - Released from house arrest. 2010 help, we can’t change our constitution. We stamps her decisions. These included the Suu Kyi resumes her role as NLD leader. have no chance.” NLD’s refusal in April to swear a parlia- Aug 19 - Meets President Thein Sein mentary oath to “uphold and abide by” the for the first time, pronounces him DEMOCRACY’S SPOILS constitution. Imposing her will might not “sincere” about reform. While the NLD’s by-election landslide be democratic, said Aung Kyi Nyunt, an Nov 18 - NLD says it will register to suggests it will win the next general elec- NLD upper house legislator. “But it’s not run in 2012 by-elections. 2011 tion in 2015, the party hardly seems like a authoritarian, because she never orders (us) Nov 30 - Hillary Clinton arrives government-in-waiting. to follow her decisions. We already agree.” in Myanmar, the first visit by a US The NLD was formed in September After a two-week stand-off and criti- Secretary of State in over 50 years. 1988 after a military crackdown that killed cism from supporters, the “Iron Aunty” Apr 1 - NLD wins 43 of 44 seats it or injured thousands of pro-democracy backed down and her MPs took their seats. contests in by-elections. Suu Kyi protesters. The junta arrested Suu Kyi be- The NLD also has a troubled relation- becomes MP for Kawhmu. fore the NLD was a year old, and hounded, ship with Myanmar’s reinvigorated media. Apr 22 - NLD confirms its newM Ps jailed and tortured its members. In 2003, One newspaper said in May that Suu Kyi’s will not make parliamentary debut government thugs attacked Suu Kyi’s con- bodyguards had assaulted one of its report- due to dispute over oath. voy, killing dozens of her supporters. She ers, which the NLD denies. Apr 23 - European Union agrees to was lucky to escape alive. Most NLD of- Some Burmese-language websites are suspend most Myanmar sanctions fices were shut down. dedicated to smearing Suu Kyi. Their unsub- for a year. New parliamentary session When Suu Kyi was freed from house ar- stantiated gossip - one falsely claimed that begins without the NLD. rest in 2010, her party was a moribund force she has a teenage daughter by a Burmese Apr 30 - NLD ends boycott, the oath with a geriatric leadership. She set about re- lover - strikingly resembles junta-era propa- unchanged. juvenating it, personally opening dozens of ganda. (The websites, whose owners protect May 2 - Suu Kyi and NLD MPs are offices. Two of the party’s aging co-founders, their identities by registering through prox- sworn into parliament. Win Tin and Tin Oo, both in their eighties, ies, couldn’t be reached for comment.) May 17 - Clinton announces the have been nudged into “patron” roles. The NLD’s parliamentary debut has also suspension of U.S. sanctions barring 2012 The party is booming - it now has a highlighted a lack of concrete policies and ex- investment in Myanmar. million members, spokesman Ohn Kyaing perts to formulate them, a critical weakness Jun 9 - Sectarian violence erupts in said. But success is bringing a new set of when Myanmar’s reformist government is Rohingya-dominated northern Rakhine problems. The NLD plans to hold its first drafting new legislation at a breakneck pace. State. At least 80 people killed and national party conference in late 2012 or Pressed by Reuters in Kawhmu to ex- thousands of homes burnt down. early 2013, and protests have erupted in plain the NLD’s policy on the Rohingya, for Jun 15 - Suu Kyi arrives in Norway on several constituencies, including Suu Kyi’s example, Suu Kyi seemed to say the party five-nation tour of Europe. Kawhmu, over who gets to attend. didn’t have one. “It’s not a policy that has to Jun 16 - Accepts the Nobel Peace The dispute highlights the friction be- be formulated by the NLD,” she said. “It’s Prize she was awarded in 1991 while tween old NLD members, who survived two something that the whole country must be under house arrest. decades of persecution, and new members involved in. It’s not just a party concern.” Jul 25 - Uses her maiden speech in who joined in reform-era Myanmar. “The Suu Kyi’s popularity in Myanmar is not Naypyitaw parliament to demand more old ones don’t want to give up their posts be- as universal as many Western admirers as- legal protection for ethnic minorities. cause they struggled,” said Ohn Kyaing. sume. She is adored in the lowlands, where Sep 16 - Leaves for the U.S., her first It also reveals a struggle between the fellow ethnic Burmans predominate and visit to the country in over 20 years. party headquarters and far-flung branches, her image adorns homes, shops, cars and

SPECIAL REPORT 5 Democracy in myanmar Suu Kyi’s precarious pivot

MILITARY RULE: Suu Kyi, nicknamed “Iron Aunty,” has vowed to change provisions in the constitution that guarantee the military a quarter of the seats in parliament. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

T-shirts. Burmans, or Bamar, make up two- U.S. trip, Suu Kyi stoked the anger with countability, said Mark Farmaner of Lon- thirds of Myanmar’s 60 million population. a gaffe. She admitted that she had a “soft don-based advocacy group Burma Cam- That reverence fades in rugged border spot” for Myanmar’s military, which was paign UK. He noted it took more than two regions, occupied by ethnic minorities who founded by her father, the independence months for British Foreign Secretary Wil- have fought decades-long wars against hero General Aung San. That expression liam Hague to comment on the violence Myanmar’s Burman-dominated military. In of filial piety ignited a storm of negative against the Rohingya minority. rural Shan State, named after the largest mi- comments on Facebook, Myanmar’s main Suu Kyi will speak up on the Rohingya nority, images of Suu Kyi are hard to find. forum for popular political discussion. issue “when the time comes,” said NLD Suu Kyi used her maiden speech in parlia- For years, the NLD backed calls for a spokesman Ohn Kyaing. “Politics is timing.” ment in July to call for greater legal protection United Nations Commission of Inquiry of minorities. But this has not inoculated her into alleged war crimes and crimes against Editing by Bill Tarrant and Michael Williams against criticism from ethnic leaders. humanity in Myanmar. This push has been Among them is Khun Htun Oo, a lead- quietly dropped since Suu Kyi’s release. ing Shan politician who was jailed for almost “What we believe in is not retributive seven years by the former junta. Suu Kyi has justice but restorative justice,” she said in FOR MORE INFORMATION been “neutralized” by participating in parlia- March. Restorative justice, she added, did Andrew R.C. Marshall ment, he told reporters in Washington last not mean putting junta members on trial. [email protected] month, a day before the two of them picked Western governments take their cue Bill Tarrant, Enterprise Editor up awards from a human-rights group. “The from Suu Kyi on human rights. And they [email protected] trust in her has gone down.” use such equivocations “to justify doing Michael Williams, Global Enterprise Editor In an interview with CNN during her nothing” about issues of justice and ac- [email protected]

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