The Dalai Lama has appealed to fellow Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out on behalf of the Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar. “The Lady,” as the former pro-democracy activist is respectfully called, has yet to comment on one of Myanmar’s most serious human rights and humanitarian crises in recent memory.
The issue attracted global attention when thousands of Rohingya, along with Bangladeshi migrants, were rescued on Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian shores after fleeing Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh. On 22 May, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that over 3,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis were still adrift in the Andaman Sea. The crisis, which has seen intense negotiations between the Southeast Asian countries and Bangladesh to repatriate the rescued migrants as well as the drama of mass graves of migrants in Malaysia, has highlighted the living conditions of and state-sanctioned discrimination against the approximately one million effectively stateless Rohingya people in Rakhine State, west Myanmar.
The Burmese government insists that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and has passed legislation that severely limits their access to employment, health care, and education, as well as the number of children they can have. In 2012, up to 280 people were killed and a further 140,000 forced into makeshift internment camps after angry mobs, encouraged by hardline Buddhist monks, took to the streets in a fit of vigilantism.
In an interview with The Australian ahead of a visit to Australia from 4–15 June, the Dalai Lama was asked about the Rohingya situation. “It’s very sad,” he replied. “In the Burmese case I hope Aung San Suu Kyi, as a Nobel laureate, can do something. I met her two times, first in London and then the Czech Republic. I mentioned about this problem and she told me she found some difficulties, that things were not simple but very complicated. But in spite of that I feel she can do something.”
The Dalai Lama’s relatively urgent choice of words suggests that he is growing increasingly concerned about Suu Kyi’s perceived silence. Aung San Suu Kyi was admired around the globe for her unwavering stance on democratic reform in Myanmar and criticism of the military junta ruling the country from 1962 to 2011, and spent 15 years under house arrest. In 2010, the generals handed power to a nominally civilian parliament while she was released and won a seat in the new parliament.
Her political capital and affiliation with the Burmese Buddhist elite mean that she must play a delicate balancing act between the military, her party, the Buddhist sangha, and the public, among whom anti-Rohingya sentiment is strong. Myanmar watchers have observed that Suu Kyi may be keeping quiet from fear of alienating Myanmar’s majority Buddhists. Quoting AP, Khaleej Times reports commentators as concluding that she is picking her fights carefully, as she is now a politician aiming for the presidency.
She wasn’t invited to an international three-day conference in Oslo intended to highlight the Rohingyas’ plight. The conference website says that she shares the “anti-Rohingya” sentiments of many in Myanmar, which are inflamed by nationalist monks. Some of these monks call for a complete repatriation of Rohingya to Bangladesh and accuse the Rohingyas of undermining Myanmar from within. Many Burmese are also worried that the wider Muslim world supports the Rohingya and will use them to undermine Myanmar.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail in April she asserted that the Rohingyas’ problems are based on fear and perceptions of being a minority.
The Dalai Lama criticized the way in which the narrative against the migrants is being framed in Myanmar and much of the press and wider media. Observing that it wasn’t enough to simply explore ways to help the Rohingya, “This is not sufficient. There’s something wrong with humanity’s way of thinking. Ultimately we are lacking concern for others for others’ lives, others’ well-being,” he told The Australian.