Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis

New UN assessments that 300,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly Muslims, have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh in two weeks underline the iniquity of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s unwillingness to intervene. The figures heighten concern the situation could be exploited by Islamist extremists, such as Islamic State in Bangladesh, and drive a new surge of refugees seeking asylum in our region.

Accounts of the exodus tell of inhumanity on a vast scale. One eyewitness saw a fleeing 25-year-old woman raped by Myanmar soldiers, before they slit her throat and that of her baby. Others saw soldiers laying minefields to blow up the refugees. On a single day last week, 300 boats loaded with refugees arrived in Bangladesh.

Ms Suu Kyi’s fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who contributed so much to the downfall of apartheid in South Africa, has warned of “ethnic cleansing” and “a slow genocide”. In a moving but sharp letter, Archbishop Tutu, who had a photo of Ms Suu Kyi on his desk for years, begged her to intervene: “If the price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep.” It was incongruous “for a symbol of righteousness to lead a country” where such atrocities occurred. “As we witness the unfolding horror we pray for you to be courageous and resilient again.”

Despite wielding the dominant civilian political power in Myanmar as State Counsellor, Ms Suu Kyi is under pressure from the military, which ruled for 50 years with cruel disregard for human rights. But that does not excuse her refusal to act or her apparently excusing the army’s brutality and that of Buddhist extremists in attacking the Rohingya. The attitude of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which sparked the crisis by attacking police posts last month, shows how easily Islamist extremists could exploit the situation. The Nobel prize committee says there is no precedent for winners being stripped of their awards. The fact that possibility has been raised shows how badly Ms Suu Kyi’s reputation has been sullied. It is not too late for her to again champion human rights.