The Rohingya crisis and Myanmar's dark road to democracy

TheNewArab

Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is set to form a civilian government for the second time in a row following the end of Myanmar's 50-year military rule.

The NLD won by a huge margin of 396 parliamentary seats in the 8 November election against the military-aligned main opposition party the Union Solidarity of Development Party (USDP), securing a second five-year term.

In-depth: Excluded from voting and long denied citizenship, Rohingya Muslims face a precarious future in post-election Myanmar. 

Editorial: Time for Aung San Suu Kyi to start acting like the Nobel winner she is

Los Angeles Times

Opinion 
The Times Editorial Board
Nov. 11, 2020

 

Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in 2017.

(Aung Shine Oo / Associated Press)

 

While much of the world has been fixated on the electoral drama in the U.S., another fraught election took place this past weekend in a country racked by violence and human rights abuses.

For only the second time since it transitioned from a military dictatorship into a fledgling democracy in 2015, voters in the South Asian country of Myanmar went to the polls to elect members of its parliament. The ruling National League of Democracy, the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Sui Kyi, has reportedly won in a bigger landslide than it did five years ago. Just as in the U.S., masses of voters turned out, enduring long lines despite a surge of coronavirus cases.

Myanmar Election Delivers Another Decisive Win for Aung San Suu Kyi

The New York Times 

By Hannah Beech and Saw Nang

Nov. 11, 2020

The civilian leader’s reputation overseas has been stained by her defense of a military accused of genocide. But in voting on Sunday, her party easily secured a parliamentary majority.

Supporters of the National League for Democracy in Yangon, Myanmar, on Monday with portraits of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whom many in the country still regard as a bulwark against military rule.Credit...Ye Aung Thu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

The political party led by Myanmar’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is poised to stay in power after winning what is only the second truly contested election the country has held in decades, though one in which many voters from ethnic minority groups were prevented from casting their ballots.

What will Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party’s win mean for the Rohingya people?

TRT WORLD
Nov 11, 2020

Human Rights activist and president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation Tun Khin discusses Myanmar’s ruling party, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, claiming victory in Monday’s general election and what it means for the Rohingya people.

Link: Here

Suu Kyi's party says it won landslide victory in Myanmar polls

FRANCH 24  

Yangon (AFP)

09/11/2020

A car carrying supporters of the National League for Democracy wave flags in front of the party's office in Mandalay Ye Naing Ye AFP

 

Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) said Monday it was confident of winning a landslide victory in Myanmar as official results trickled in following the weekend's coronavirus-disrupted election.

Millions lined up for hours to cast their ballots on Sunday -- only the second national election since the country emerged from outright military rule in 2011.

Aung San Suu Kyi in line for second term as Myanmar votes counted

Aljazeera
9 Nov 2020

Early election results are expected on Monday as voters thronged polling stations despite pandemic.

The elections commission expects to announce early official results on Monday [Shwe Paw Mya Tin/Reuters] 

Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to win a second term in office when authorities in Myanmar release early election results on Monday.

Sunday’s general election was seen as a referendum on the government led by Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), which remains popular at home but has seen its reputation collapse overseas amid allegations of genocide against the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority.

 

Aung San Suu Kyi expected to keep power in Myanmar election

The Guardian  

Rebecca Ratcliffe
South-east Asia correspondent
Sun 8 Nov 2020

‘Mother Suu’ remains popular despite coronavirus, conflict in Rakhine state and genocide charges

Voters wearing protective face masks line up to cast their ballots at a polling station in Yangon, Myanmar. Photograph: Thein Zaw/AP

Voters across Myanmar have gone to the polls for an election that is expected to return to power the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains hugely popular at home despite allegations of a genocide that have destroyed her reputation abroad.

Queues of people waited in line, in some cases for hours, to cast their ballots on Sunday in the country’s second general election since the end of full military rule. Most were wearing masks as a precaution against the coronavirus. The country has confirmed more than 60,000 infections, the majority of which were reported since mid-August.

Rohingyas Brace For The Worst During Myanmar’s Election As Suu Kyi Takes The Lead

Transcontinental Times
By Tanbirul Miraj Ripon
November 8, 2020

The future of democracy and the fate of the Rohingya refugees hangs in the balance

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

MYANMAR. Yangon: The country’s general election took place today. Due to COVID-19, voting has been completed in accordance with health regulations. Because of this, voting is still going on in some areas. A majority of 322 seats are needed to form a government. The National League For Democracy (NLD) and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) have received the majority of the votes so far. Early results show the NLD have already secured 13 Seats, with 33,677 votes, and the USDP with currently zero seats, but 12,133 votes.

As Suu Kyi Denies Genocide, Opponents Up Anti-Rohingya Rhetoric

Courthouse News Service

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
November 5, 2020

“The party runs the risk of losing its main prop.”Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi makes a hand gesture while wearing a face shield, mask and gloves during a September 8 flag-raising ceremony to mark the first day of election campaigning at the National League for Democracy party’s temporary headquarters in Naypyitaw. Myanmar holds a general election on November 8. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)

NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar (AFP) — As Aung San Suu Kyi is vilified internationally for denying genocide against the Rohingya, her opponents in Sunday’s Myanmar election are ramping up the rhetoric against the Muslim minority.

There was global revulsion at military-backed operations in 2017 that saw hundreds of thousands of people flee burning villages into the squalor of refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.

DIVISIVE LEADER Who is Aung San Suu Kyi and what are the accusations against Myanmar’s leader?

 

Cyrus Engineer 

Tanyel Mustafa 

3 Nov 2020,

 

AUNG San Suu Kyi was one of the world's most admired and respected leaders, with many hoping she would usher in a new era for war-plagued Myanmar.

She has risen to power after becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners but has been condemned over her handling of the Rohingya crisis.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the controversial leader of MyanmarCredit: EPA

Who is Aung San Suu Kyi?

Born in what was then known as Rangoon, Burma, in the final days of World War Two, Aung San Suu Kyi suffered early tragedies as her father was assassinated while her sister drowned in a lake.

Myanmar Rohingya feel anger and despair before election

NIKKEI ASIA
CAPE DIAMOND,
October 30, 2020 

Members of Muslim group stripped of citizenship can't vote or run for parliament

A man and a girl stand outside their home in a village in the state of Rakhine, western Myanmar, in 2018. (Photo by Cape Diamond)
CAPE DIAMOND, Contributing writerOctober 30, 2020 16:18 JST

YANGON -- Anger and despair is spreading among the Rohingya in Myanmar before the country's general election on Nov. 8 as many in the Muslim group have had their citizenship stripped and are barred from voting or running for parliament.

Tayub Uddin, 65, is a Rohingya politician in Yangon and serves as a senior vice chairman of the Democracy and Human Rights Party, a Rohingya political party. While he is actively participating in politics, his family members in Rakhine State, located on the country's western coast and home to many Rohingya, are not recognized as citizens.

Timeline: Myanmar's Troubled Recent Past, Ahead of November 8 Polls

The WIRE
Poppy McPherson
30/Oct/2020 

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi casts an advance vote ahead of November 8th general election in Naypyitaw, Myanmar October 29, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Thar Byaw 

Yangon: Myanmar goes to the polls on November 8, 2020, in its second general election since the end of full military rule in 2011.

Here is a timeline of some key events in the nation’s recent rocky history:

OP-ED: Democracy without rights

Dhaka Tribune 

Md Jahid Hashan
Published : October 26th, 2020 

A call for postponing the elections was confidently dismissed by the ruling NLD REUTERS

The 2020 Myanmar general election is already shaping up to be fundamentally flawed.

The 2020 Myanmar general election is scheduled to be held on November 8. This election is a significant landmark, as Myanmar’s second general election is based on a multi-party democracy. It is also a crucial litmus test of the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) ability to rule properly.

Suu Kyi’s tainted policies alienate foreign investors

ASIA TIMES 

by Rory Wallace
October 15, 2020

YANGON – Aung San Suu Kyi’s government is putting off foreign companies that emphasize human rights in their investment decisions, as Britain’s CDC Group, Norway’s Telenor and international mining groups struggle to navigate her administration’s controversial policies and their associated reputation risks.

That’s holding back the underdeveloped nation’s economic and business potential, significantly at a time the de facto national leader is running for national re-election amid a moribund economy. 

Don’t be fooled. Myanmar’s ‘democratic election’ is a sham.

The Washington Post 

Opinion by Tun Khin 

Oct. 14, 2020

Tun Khin is president of the Burma Rohingya Organization UK.

 

What a difference five years can make. In 2015, many of my fellow Rohingya people cheered as the party of the famed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory in Myanmar’s first democratic elections of the 21st century, bringing an end to decades of outright military rule. Euphoria reigned. We hoped not only for a new beginning for the country, but also for an end to the oppression against us.

Today, as Myanmar gears up for another general election on Nov. 8, the situation is starkly different. Three years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi, now the country’s de facto head of state, stood by as military leaders launched a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign that killed thousands of Rohingya and drove more than 700,000 across the border into Bangladesh, where they now languish in immense refugee camps. The roughly 500,000 who remain in the country have been effectively disenfranchised. They are denied access to Myanmar’s democracy simply because of who they are.

Rohingya: Dhaka wants Suu Kyi to join talks in Beijing

Dhaka Tribune 

 UNB
October 12th, 2020 

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi leaves the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the top United Nations court, during court hearings in a case filed by Gambia against Myanmar alleging genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya population, in The Hague, Netherlands December 12, 2019 Reuters

Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming proposed a tripartite meeting between foreign ministers of the three countries - Bangladesh, Myanmar and China

Bangladesh wants Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to be present at a tripartite meeting in Beijing, as proposed by China to discuss Rohingya repatriation issues.

"It will not be done without her presence. She should be there," Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen conveyed to China.

Suu Kyi, state counsellor of Myanmar, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but she has subsequently been widely criticised for doing nothing to stop the rape, murder and genocide in Rakhine, refusing to condemn the Myanmar military or acknowledge accounts of their atrocities.

The foreign minister said the number one objective of Bangladesh is to see the repatriation of the Rohingyas to their place of origin in Rakhine State.

Human rights group urges Myanmar to end arbitrary and indefinite detention of 130,000 Rohingya Muslims

TODAY NEWS AFRIC

By Press Release

08.10.2020

Aung San Suu Kyi

Although we are headquartered in Washington D.C. USA, our reporters and editors are working around the globe to cover what you care about. We invite you to donate to our fundraiser to help us keep our quality news free and available to all. 

 

The Myanmar government should urgently end the arbitrary and indefinite detention of approximately 130,000 Rohingya Muslims in squalid and abusive camps in Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Thursday.

Rohingya living in ‘open prison’ in Myanmar: Human Rights Watch

Aljazeera

8 Oct 2020

Report says about 130,000 Rohingya live under ‘squalid and abusive’ conditions and calls for an end to their ‘arbitrary detention’. 

Rohingya refugees gather near the fence at the 'no man's land' zone in Maungdaw district in Myanmar's Rakhine State in 2018 [File: Nyein Chan Naing/EPA]

 

Approximately 130,000 Rohingya Muslims who remain in refugee camps in Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine state live under “squalid and abusive” conditions, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday urging that their “arbitrary and indefinite” detention be ended immediately.

The truth about Burma’s ‘imprisoned princess’

The SPECTATOR
Francis Pike
10 October 2020

It’s as ignorant to demonise Aung San Suu Kyi as it was to idolise her

As Perseus was flying along the coast on his winged horse Pegasus, he spotted Andromeda tied to a rock as a sacrifice to Poseidon’s sea monster Cetus. It was love at first sight. Perseus slew Cetus and married Andromeda. Thus began the damsel-in-distress archetype that has been a mainstay of western culture ever since. Riffs on the archetype have been used by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens and Wagner. Perhaps it was these examples that inspired the global liberal establishment (the BBC, Hollywood and the Nobel Peace Prize committee among others) to create, in the 1990s, the mythical version of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s ‘imprisoned princess’, the saintly spiritual heir to Mahatma Gandhi, as Time magazine described her.

Spilling the beans

The Statemen
Statesman News Service
New Delhi
September 10, 2020

The extent to which the in house spilling of the beans will tarnish the standing of the omnipotent military and a generally tightlipped Suu Kyi can only be speculated upon.

When Myanmar’s putative icon of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, raised the flag of her party, the National League for Democracy, in Yangon on Tuesday, she at least theoretically flagged off the ruling party’s campaign for the election this November.