Happy Birthday, Aunty!

#aungsansuukyi KNEW our country's organized racist violence re: #rohingya #Muslims then. But she didn't act.

When she did she sided w/ military-killers. As #Myanmar Agent, she dismissed-denied #GENOCIDE



In those days she was still feted as Asia's Mandela, and Bono would fly to Oslo to fetch her in his private jet for a half-day stop over in Dublin - where she was showered with honours - such as Amnesty International's Citizen award or something or other, in addition to having been given the key to the City of Dublin.

After having failed to answer a simple yes or no question- are Rohingya your (Myanmar) citizens?  - by Anthony Kuhn of US National Public Radio (now in Beijing, I think), who covered her European victory lap as it were, she adopted what I called "studied silence", over the issue that was to become the defining issue of her political career - and our country, namelly the genocide of Rohingyas.

She answered the question with "I don't know", Khun told me in person in London as he came to cover the LSE Rule of Law Roundtable where she was the Guest of Honour.

She chose NOT utter a word about Burmese racism, organized violence or Rohingya, and I was pre-assigned to handle the Rohingya question.  For Rohingya persecution began to hit headlines in the media.

A Kachin student at Birbeck College, U, of London confronted her from the floor about her silence over Myanmar military's violence against Kachin people in Northern Myanmar - just below Southern China - she was livid.   A feet away from her, I could see her hands shaking with rage: "how dare you a minority man embarrasses me in public!" was the message.

When the panel was over, Suu Kyi turned to the Chair Professor Mary Kaldor, a friend and contemporary with her late husband, and told the latter, "they (Kachins) are not good either" (meaning both Myanmar military perpetrators and Kachin victims who fight back are bad - Trumpian "all sides").

Though I had turned my back towards her leadership or rigidly held policies on Burma, I was genuinely deferential.  

I learned later Suu Kyi wasn't too pleased that the Master of Ceremony was a British-educated Burmese Indian woman who welcomed and introduced her to the audience before the panel chair.  She was a barrister  with the British Bar Association which co-sponsored the event with LSE.    More important, Suu Kyi did NOT know or did not seem to care that  their fathers - Aung San and the MC's grandfather MA Rashid - were closest comrades and friends - who called each other brothers -  in having plotted their rebellion against the British colonial rule from mid-1930's onwards until Aung San's assassination in July 1947.  

All she could see in the MC was she was a Muslim Burmese, raised in or educated in Britain. 

Be that as it may everyone was respectful and appreciative of her presence.  Professor of Law Nicholar Lacey of Oxford, to my right, brought a single yellow rose to give Suu Kyi.     LSE ordered a big cake and a special birthday present. 

LSE consulted with me as to what would be a good or suitable gift for her, and I suggested that an old picture of her father in London when he came for the independence negotiation at the invitation of PM Clement Atlee in Jan 1947.  Surely, LSE managed to get a copy of Aung San's black and white picture - sitting at the writing desk at his suite at The Dorchester in Park Lane, Hyde Park - and presented her  the black-framed picture of her beloved father with a baseball cap.  And we all sang Happy Birthday, Daw Suu!
And the rest is history.   I don't think anyone of us - including LSE academics and students and admin - would be baking any cake or singing her happy birthday.

Sad.   But it is her own un-doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2O0yp-xijc

Speaker(s): Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Professor Christine Chinkin, Professor Nicola Lacey, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, Dr Maung Zarni Recorded on 19 June 2012 in Peacock Theatre, Portugal Street. Audio podcast available here - http://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-player?id=1516

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is Chairman of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Member of Parliament of Kawhmu constituency in Burma. She was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1991.

Christine Chinkin, FBA, is currently Professor in International Law at the London School of Economics. She has widely published on issues of international human rights law, law, including as co-author of The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis.

Nicola Lacey holds a Senior Research Fellowship at All Souls College, and is Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford, having previously held a chair at the London School of Economics. Nicola's research is in criminal law and criminal justice, with a particular focus on comparative and historical scholarship. In 2011 she won the Hans Sigrist Prize for scholarship on the rule of law in modern societies.

Sir Geoffrey Nice QC is a barrister; he is a signatory of Harvard's Crimes in Burma report. Sir Geoffrey is a member of Burma Justice Committee and works with NGO's and other groups seeking international recognition of crimes committed in conflicts; represents government and similar interests at the ICC. A Burmese native, Dr Zarni is a veteran founder of the Free Burma Coalition, one of the Internet's first and largest human rights campaigns and a Visiting Fellow at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, LSE. His forthcoming book, provisionally titled Life under the Boot: 50-years of Military Dictatorship in Burma, will be published by Yale University Press.   (SADLY, I NEVER MANAGED TO FINISH THIS DAMNED BOOK:  TOO BUSY FACEBOOKING!)

Mary Kaldor is professor of Global Governance in the Department of International Development and Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at LSE. She writes on globalisation, international relations and humanitarian intervention, global civil society and global governance, as well as what she calls New Wars.