Analyzing from its problematic history, geography, social and economic factors, Myanmar is not an easy territory for anyone aspiring to become its national leader. Politically, it has more than its share of (almost never-ending) military dictatorships that pale the ugly records of other despots of our time by any indicator. The Junta has used most of the brutal and horrendous methods that were invented by beastly human perverts to prolong its bloody grip on power. The faces of the rulers have changed, but the institution that rules has not changed.
Long gone are the inalienable rights granted under the Charter of the UN Declaration of Human Rights! With Draconian measures implemented one after another, the country has become the worst place on earth to live outside war-ravaged countries of Iraq and Afghanistan (and the occupied Palestine). Taking blood-soaked pages from history, the usurpers have utilized the divide-and-rule policy to fragment the already-fragmented society of nations and ethnicities – rewarding one for its cooperation and punishing the other for its non-compliance – perceived or real. The temptation is often high to bemuse oneself as belonging to the majority – with very little to lose.
After all, the ruling regime is drawn from the majority Burman race. With the loss of the oppressed minority there has to be some gain for the privileged majority! And some human vultures and hyenas from the national/religious majority have taken that cue to benefit from the suffering of people of the minority races, ethnicities and faiths. Similarly, some opportunists and bounty hunters have emerged from the communities that are minority in the national picture but majority in the regional area. They play the same tune as the SPDC plays — behaving like Quisling and Mir Jafar of olden times, and Chalaby of our time. Naturally, if you are part of an ethnic and religious minority like the Rohingya community of the Arakan state of Myanmar, you automatically settle for the worst kind of human rights abuses.
Given the reality of the troubling situation inside Burma, the role of true leadership become so crucial! Who can unite rival factions, tribes and nations, fractious communities and yet take them to a higher glory that is win-win for all? It is an almost-impossible task requiring vision and a well chalked out plan, epitomizing sincerity of propose and action, which is motivating and fulfilling. Very few have succeeded in this epoch-making trial of genuine leadership.
Is Daw Suu Kyi that person for Myanmar? No one can deny the fact that she is best recognised – both inside and outside Myanmar- to provide that glue-some attraction. She has essentially become the face of Myanmar in its struggle for freedom, democracy and human rights. No one comes even remotely close to her in that role of leadership. She is uncontested. In Suu Kyi, the majority sees her as one of their own, who understands them and can talk face to face in the same language. They see her as the daughter of their venerated leader.
How about the minority? It is in Daw Suu Kyi that the minority communities like the Rohingya, Karen and Shan look for leadership, as do many other communities that form today's Myanmar. They aspire for democracy, freedom and human rights – something that has been snatched away from them by the military regimes that have ruled for most of its post-colonial period. She is their answer to decades of deprivation, dispossession and dehumanization. She is their hope for return from exile — from the bushes, jungles and refugee camps — to ancestral homes. It is around her that they dream of reconstructing torched homes and uniting with family members.
She is their leader, comrade, and sister. She is also a fellow-traveler tasting pain and suffering in the long march to freedom, democracy and human rights. She is their last chance to redress their old grievances and elevate their status from statelessness to statehood, denial to acceptance, non-entity to entity, and become effective citizens in a federal system that respects and protects their unique place in history, culture and religion. There is none that they can look for providing that unifying leadership.
What undeniably is the strength of the movement for freedom, democracy and human rights, unfortunately, is also its greatest weakness. It is Daw Suu Kyi. This fact is known to the regime and all those who have studied history vis-à-vis the unique role of leadership. The democratic movement has no one to replace Daw Suu Kyi. There is no Boumedienne, no Mbeki, and no Nehru for Burma who can effectively lead the movement if Daw Suu Kyi is no more.
That is why many of the measures taken by the SPDC regime are nothing more than foot-dragging tactics to buy time, hoping that with the death of Daw Suu Kyi the dissident movement will cease to exist or lose its legitimacy as the unifying force. The measures that they tout are hypocritical and part of a long term strategy to strengthen their grip on power. If they were sincere to make a positive change, knowing how well Daw Suu Kyi is respected by all dissidents, they would not have ignored or neglected her. They would have consulted her on the so-called roadmap for democracy in Myanmar.
The SPDC's tactics to ignore Daw Suu Kyi on its proposed roadmap shows their naked hypocrisy or insincerity. This so-called blue-print for democracy will not have any better luck than dozens of other efforts that were tried out before that did not have people's support. The sooner the SPDC planners understand the importance of Daw Suu Kyi in restoration of democracy, human rights and freedom, the better. Without her consent, there is no buy-in from the various communities that make up today's Burma, and not even from the majority Burman community.
The greatest flaw with the SPDC leadership is in its miscalculation about the very state that they have ruled for years. They forget that Myanmar is an artificial state of diverse peoples that cannot be kept united by brute forces alone. It needs a unifying figure that fosters mutual trust and unity, and strengthens the whole. Nobel Peace prize winner Suu Kyi is that figure. With her, there is a united Myanmar. And without her, only disunity and break-up! In her, the regime has the last chance to unite various communities under one federal system.
Will this realization sink in with the SPDC regime? I doubt it.
When hypocrisy and brute force become the guiding principles, their practitioners try to hoodwink all hallucinating that everyone else is fooled and their means are justifiable. In these, they fool none but themselves and dig their own graves of ignominy!
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The Rohingya community of Arakan, Burma (Myanmar) is one of the most unfortunate and down-trodden minority groups of the world, who have been constantly subjected to gross human rights violation decades after decades by the military rulers of Burma who have turned Burma into a secret state of terror since 1962. The Council for Restoration of Democracy in Burma (CRDB) has been working for the restoration of Democracy in Burma as well as for the restoration of human rights of Rohingya community. Our Email: crdb.rohingyas@gmail.com
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Dr. Habib Siddiqui has a long history of peaceful activism towards improving human rights and creating a more just and equitable world. He has been a prolific author in the genre of humanity, social conscience and human rights since 1978. He has written over 200 essays, many of which are published as Op/Ed columns in newspapers, magazines, journals and the Internet around the globe [for recent samples, see: his website: www.habibsiddiqui.org]. His meticulously researched essays and articles combined with real human dimensions on the plight of the displaced peoples of Rohingya (Arakan) in Myanmar, Chechnya and Palestine and American Muslims in the post-9/11 era have made him a singularly important intellectual offering a sane voice with counterpoints to the shrill threats of the oppressors and the powerful. He offers a fresh and insightful perspective on a whole generation of a misunderstood and displaced people with little or no voice of their own.