During the 15 years that she was imprisoned by the army of her country, the Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi became an icon for the “intelligentsia” and for the heroes of political correctness in the West.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize, even turned into sweet music by the group U2. The relatively smooth transition from a military dictatorship in 2010, led by her, seemed to prove the emergence of a Nelson Mandela from Southeast Asia.
It seemed fair. To accommodate the uniforms, great protection has been granted to them over the State. Myanmar is unique in the world, where ministries and seats in parliament are reserved for military personnel.
This has generated a dysfunctional core tension, which makes the country almost automatically vulnerable to coups d’état like the one currently taking place in the country.
To make matters worse, Suu Kyi has shown a very particular appetite for power. She is in the blood: she is the daughter of General Aung San, the founder of the modern Burmese state, who orchestrated the country’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1948 – killed in a coup of internal state just before seeing the act accomplished.
In 2015, she circumvented the Constitution, which did not allow her to be President because her late husband and two children are English citizens, and assumed the post of State Councilor – exercising de facto authority in the country.
The armed forces did not like it at all, initiating the process of attrition that led to the current coup.
The heroine of the West’s well-meaning showed terrible sides when, in 2017, he openly defended his country against charges of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Even his apologist Bono, the head of U2, asked him to resign.
In addition to denying what was obvious to international observers, Suu Kyi maintained discriminatory policies, vetoing ethnic participation in public life. Journalists who investigated the massacres were bitterly imprisoned.
With the new prison, Suu Kyi might ironically gain some of the outside support he has lost in recent years. She remains the most popular political figure in her country, but the dynamics of power continue to be dictated by the military.
This has been the case since its foundation, with successive articulations and dictators alternating the command of the nation. The “normal old man” prevails.
There is not much the West can do. The United States already maintains sanctions against several senior officials and that has not deterred them from taking action. China, with which Myanmar has a very complicated partnership, has already indicated that it will let the boat run, true to its no-intervention policy.
After all, Beijing already faces genocide charges against another Muslim minority, the Uyghurs. Finally, regional neighbors, who occasionally have their own shots, have remained silent for the moment.