Aung San's Fall From Grace
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ|April 2018

Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, knows too well what it is like to be persecuted. So why is the political leader of Myanmar allowing hundreds of thousands of Rohingyan Muslims to be driven from their country in what the UN describes as “ethnic cleansing”? William Langley investigates.

Aung San's Fall From Grace

During her long, hard 15 years under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi lived alone in a decaying lakeside villa, denied news, medicine, even contact with her children, but sustained by an outside world that revered her as a heroine. Worthy Western institutions showered her with awards and honours, and right-thinking celebrities from George Clooney to Yoko Ono joined the rolling campaign for her release. Suu Kyi’s remarkable one-woman battle to bring democracy to her native Myanmar (formerly Burma), became a global cause célèbre, and when, barely two years ago, she became the country’s first civilian leader in decades, millions rejoiced.

But today, 72-year-old Suu Kyi is an international pariah, her saintly reputation shattered. The same organisations that handed her prizes are scrambling to disassociate themselves from her, and her Hollywood fan club has retreated into embarrassed silence. Her old Oxford college, St Hugh’s, has taken her portrait down, and The Nobel Peace Prize committee, which gave her its award in 1991, is under pressure to rescind the honour.

At the core of Suu Kyi’s fall from grace is an unfolding human disaster in the west of the country, where hundreds of thousands of Muslims, a religious minority known as the Rohingya, have been driven from their homes in a wave of military operations characterised by the United Nations as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. Witnesses have described mass shootings, rapes and burnings, and the exodus has created a vast refugee crisis in neighbouring Bangladesh.

To the dismay of her former admirers, Suu Kyi has refused not only to intervene, but even to criticise the military’s onslaught. In the few – mostly prickly and defensive – statements she has made, she has dismissed the allegations of atrocities as exaggerations, and claimed that the actions are needed to curb terrorism.

この記事は Australian Women’s Weekly NZ の April 2018 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

この記事は Australian Women’s Weekly NZ の April 2018 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY NZのその他の記事すべて表示
PRETTY WOMAN
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

PRETTY WOMAN

Dial up the joy with a mood-boosting self-care session done in the privacy of your own home. It’s a blissful way to banish the winter blues.

time-read
3 分  |
July 2024
Hitting a nerve
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Hitting a nerve

Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes could aid physical and mental wellbeing.

time-read
5 分  |
July 2024
The unseen Rovals
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

The unseen Rovals

Candid, behind the scenes and neverbefore-seen images of the royal family have been released for a new exhibition.

time-read
2 分  |
July 2024
Great read
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Great read

In novels and life - there's power in the words left unsaid.

time-read
2 分  |
July 2024
Winter dinner winners
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Winter dinner winners

Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of budget-concious recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.

time-read
3 分  |
July 2024
Winter baking with apples and pears
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Winter baking with apples and pears

Celebrate the season of apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the cold weather blues away.

time-read
7 分  |
July 2024
The wines and lines mums
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

The wines and lines mums

Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.

time-read
10+ 分  |
July 2024
Former ballerina'sBATTLE with BODY IMAGE
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

Former ballerina'sBATTLE with BODY IMAGE

Auckland author Sacha Jones reveals how dancing led her to develop an eating disorder and why she's now on a mission to educate other women.

time-read
7 分  |
July 2024
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN

When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.

time-read
8 分  |
July 2024
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START
Australian Women’s Weekly NZ

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START

Responsible for keeping the likes of Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis in shape, Malin Svensson is on a mission to motivate those in midlife to move more.

time-read
5 分  |
July 2024