Derek Mitchell, former US Ambassador to Myanmar, told the BBC: "The story of Aung San Suu Kyi is as much about us as it is about her. She may not have changed. She may have been consistent and we just didn't know the full complexity of who she is. We have to be mindful that we shouldn't endow people with some iconic image beyond which is human."
The above quote was made by Mr. Mitchell to the BBC in the beginning of March as the nation of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) begin to go through another military coup de ta. For those of you who do not know who Aung San Suu Kyi is, a short history lesson. In one sentence, after Nelson Mandela, she became the most famous Nobel “Peace” Prize recipient (a prize for being a political dissident against the military heads of her nation - in the eyes of the world at the time, they were the “evil bad guys”) to achieve political power and rulership of her nation after several years of being a political prisoner under house arrest.
Perhaps it was because she was a seemingly soft spoken, demure woman, she received so much acclaim and sympathy. Or perhaps it was through her contacts in England where she went to college, and also were she met Michael Aris who was a historian and expert on Bhutanese, Tibetan and Himalayan cultures in Oxford University as well as other renowned colleges in Britain, that she was able to meet the right people who were able to take her “cause” and bring it to the world forum with all the PR and media power they could muster behind it, to the point that she became, as Mr. Mitchel said, “an iconic image beyond which is human.” The famous Irish rock band, U2, took up her cause and wrote a song “Walk On” in the “All that You Can’t Leave Behind” album (she appeared in the music video of that song).
In the course of her “dissident years,” she achieved other honours such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barak Obama of the United States, the Congressional Gold Medal in the United States by the Congress, Honorary Citizenship by the parliament of Canada, the Sakharov Prize by the European Union, the Olaf Palme by Sweden, and was made an Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia - the highest civilian awards from each of these countries. The embarrassment of these nations is something that their respective governments are trying to hide now. Several of these nations and endowments have stripped her of the honours previously bestowed on her. How did it become like this? What was the cause that made this “peace activist” and “political freedom fighter,” persona non grata? The answer lies in the border region of Rakhine State with a Muslim people group in it known as the Rohingya.
According to several Human Rights groups, there were 1.4 million Rohingya people in Myanmar/Burma prior to 2017. From 2017 to the present day, 750,000 to 900,000 of these people have fled the nation into next door neighbour Bangladesh because of intense government oppression/persecution. For decades, discrimination, mob violence at the hands of government supported gangs, lack of basic human rights, and (especially in recent times) extreme violence against adults and children. These included beatings as well as gang rape of women and girls on a scale similar to what happened in Cambodia during the diabolical regime of the Khmer Rouge. Sitting on top of it all was the figure known as the “State Councillor” (a position synonymous to Prime Minister, created especially for her according to Myanmar law) and Foreign Minister of Myanmar, Aung Sang Suu Kyi. How did it come to this end?
Aung Sang Suu Kyi was one of the children of the man who is considered the “father of the modern nation of Burma,” Aung San. The independence movement of Burma corresponds to about the same time as those of India and Pakistan - around the years both before and after World War 2. The Southeast Asian Theatre of the war was just as important and horrifying as any other theatre during WW2. The Japanese Army had managed to conquer everything from major parts of China all the way to the eastern border of India. All the European colonies in this area were hot with talk of independence. Each independence movement in every nation had to make a choice between empires/colonial powers. There were elements in each of those movements who were willing to take sides with the Japanese against the British, or the Communists, against the Japanese and/or British, all in the name of achieving independence and/or power. Aung San was such a person. He wanted Burma’s independence from Britain at any cost, even if that meant siding with the communists from China or the Japanese Empire.
To make a long story short, he did finally achieve Burmese sovereignty as a British Commonwealth, and then later as an independent nation. But he did not live long enough to see that independence. While serving as Premier of the British Crown Colony of Burma, he and most of his cabinet were assassinated by anti-government forces within the army. He left behind his wife and three children: Aung Sang Suu Kyi and her two brothers. She was only two years old.
Burma is a nation of extreme poverty, but like the “elites” in the neighbouring nations of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, it is most unlikely that Aung Sang Suu Kyi experienced any of that. She had the best education that could be achieved by someone who is born to a family in political power, namely in Christian and Catholic schools. Her higher education took her to colleges and universities in India and England. She obtained a BA degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1967 and a MA in Politics in 1968 at St Hugh’s College, Oxford University. As said before, this brought her into a world with the rich and powerful “movers and shakers” in the world. In the 1960’s, fellow countryman and perhaps the most famous statesman from Burma, Mr. U. Thant became the third Secretary-General of the United Nations. Aung Sang Suu Kyi worked in the UN during this time period during Mr. Thant’s administration.
In 1972, she married fellow Oxford scholar, Dr. Michael Aris (scholar in Eastern Himalayan and Tibetan Studies). They have two sons. Michael Aris died of cancer at the age of 53, in 1999.
Aung San Suu Kyi came onto the scene in the late 1980s. This coincided with her personal study and deeper devotion to Buddhism as well as the writings and methods of Mahatma Gandhi. I must include a personal opinion about the above points. I doubt that most people in the West have seen the uncensored, unedited version of Buddhism of the East. Everything we see from here goes through the filters of such things as the Nobel Peace Prize and such personalities as the Dalai Lama (a Nobel laureate), entertainment personalities such as Richard Gere and Tina Turner, and political dissidents such as Aung San Suu Kyi. It is easy to talk about moral generalities such as love, hope, and nonviolence; those are points that the “Christian” West would understand. What we don’t understand is that any country governed by Buddhist thought is nothing but miserable. Life is so cheap and without value. Prostitution and human trafficking is at its most depraved level. Burma itself is a Buddhist nation - why then is it in such turmoil, and has been so for the last four or five decades? If getting to that Nirvana, that 0 point where there is no pain or anything else, why should the plight of this nation matter to anyone?
Aung San Suu Kyi studied political science at Oxford and she observed first hand from her days both in Britain as well as in the United Nations the type of adoration the masses of the world can give to the “peacemakers.” Such people are on the cover of Time; their books are sold in bookstores in major cities and international airports; they are serenaded by the world of Entertainment; celebrities want their picture taken with them and “they are a star!” She observed another thing as well. In almost every case of one of these “peacemakers,” there is a side that the cameras are not going to see, on purpose. It does not do well for the world to know that Mahatma Gandhi, in his private life, would be considered a paedophile by today’s standards. That Martin Luther King Jr., in his private life, was a serial adulterer, something that was known by many in the press, the FBI, and to President Kennedy and his wife, the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy (Mrs. Kennedy even mentioned this in audio recordings for a private interview in the aftermath of her husband’s assassination). That Yasser Arafat had over $300,000,000.00 in a Swiss Bank Account (not the most serious of his crimes) of his own, despite claiming to have given up everything for the “liberation of Palestine” (after his death, his wife and the PLO fought for control of the money). That Nelson Mandela, the icon from South Africa, had a secret life that was anything but iconic (he was very much a womanizer and only God knows what the Me-Too movement would have said about his peccadilloes!). In each of these individuals, the media and/or the movers and shakers in high places intentionally looked the other way, claiming that these individuals were leading mankind to a “greater good” - a lie that goes back to the Fall in the Garden of Eden.
Aung San Suu Kyi followed that game as long as she could. She was a media darling. Her words were treated as sacrosanct and ultimately, she achieved both position and power in Myanmar. The military junta that governed that nation learned the political game well. In this Buddhist country, interracial marriage is illegal, and as woman who had married a white man, and had children with him, she could not legally become the President, or head of government of that nation. After diplomatic discussions and concessions, the government created a new position specifically for her in which she would have all the power and responsibilities in countries with Prime Ministers; they called it the State Counsellor of Myanmar. She was at the climax of ambition. She was lauded by the entire world and stood and spoke in virtually every forum in the name of “hope and peace.” She was an “enlightened” advocate for Green Energy to stop global warming. She was the portrait of the “gentle but strong woman” - a messianic figure who would make her country into a new Shangri La. And then the world began to hear about the Rohingya people crisis… and then they begin to hear the words coming from Aung San Suu Kyi about it: “Every country has human rights problems.” After hearing the testimony and seeing the evidence of the genocide and persecution at the United Nation’s International Court of Justice, she responded by saying “Genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis,” and then claimed that the actions of the Burmese military were against terrorists without explaining the mass rapes and murders of innocents and the 900,000 Rohingya people who fled for their lives into Bangladesh (the evidence was presented right in front of her).
The Rohingya people were mostly in the state of Rakhine in eastern Burma. Before, going on, a few facts have to be told first. Burma/Myanmar is a nation with almost 90% of the population practising Buddhism (particularly Theravada Buddhism). The Rohingya are people whose ancestry can be traced back to the period of the Mogul Empire in India and Muslim traders from there who travelled the Silk Road to China for trade. In spite of their long history in the region, the Rohingya are a hated people group in Burma (according to the UN, they are on the list of the “least wanted, most persecuted” peoples in the world). They are denied citizenship. Their movement in the nation is highly restricted. They are denied any opportunity at higher education, and any other basic services for that matter. The reason given by the government for these policies is that the Rohingya are considered illegal aliens from Bangladesh.
Myanmar is a nation which is stuck in a rut of backwardness, similar to Afghanistan. Supposedly, it is a nation with great economic potential as well as resources, but it is also one of the most corrupt governments in the world with one of the biggest economic divisions between the extremely wealthy few and everyone else who live in poverty. Supposedly, the nation has a 90% literacy rate (courtesy of the government sponsored education system) and yet very little opportunity, development, and almost no freedom for speech or thought. On paper there is a democracy which produced a United Nation Secretary General; in reality, in the last forty years, the military has been very much in control. As impoverished and turbulent as this nation is, it is the second biggest exporter of opium after Afghanistan - in other words, a very pivotal player in the world of narcotics/opiates/drugs.
Though Burma has a relationship with India in its history, it is more aligned with China both economically and with regards to defence. Some of the islands owned by this nation have been leased to China for the Red Chinese Navy, something that has irritated India to no end. I guess the “civilized” movers and thinkers thought Aung San Suu Kyi would be the person to change or remedy much of these issues just by being someone who was “educated and honoured in the West”. But it was not to be.
In an article in The Guardian by Hannah Elis-Petersen from 2018 titled “From Peace Icon to Pariah-Aung San Suu Kyi’s Fall from Grace,” the writer pointed out Myanmar is more repressive as a nation than ever before and this just two or three years after Aung San Suu Kyi acquired power in that nation:
The Rohingya Muslims have always been one of the most persecuted minorities in Myanmar but had long placed their faith in Aung San Suu Kyi as the leader who would at last treat them as rightful citizens. They were always among those demonstrating on her behalf since the 1990s, standing shoulder to shoulder with the NLD. It was trust that proved to be misplaced. While she was not responsible for the military crackdown that occurred in Rakhine state in August 2017, she has said nothing to condemn it since it happened. Aung San Suu Kyi propagated assertions that the military’s actions were an appropriate response to a Rohingya militia uprising, even describing the generals accused of genocide as “quite sweet”. She is also said to regularly express irritation to diplomats that all anyone talks to her about is Rakhine. Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur to Myanmar, said Aung San Suu Kyi was “annoyed” when she raised the Rohingya in their meeting… “I’m now beginning to wonder how much of her motivation in the whole struggle was truly for democracy and how much of it was more based around her own sense of destiny to do this as the daughter of Aung San, and for that reason she wanted to be in power,” he said. “I think that may be more of a factor than any of us had realized.”
Her leadership style was very authoritarian and “imperious,” and instead of political dialogue and debate, she began to jail opposition party members in parliament as well as journalists who were asking questions about the Rohingya crisis and other matters. As said before, she did nothing to stop the Rohingya genocide, but rather, according to increasing evidence, she encouraged it. And the international powerbrokers, movers, and shakers are trying to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that this episode did not happen. Other Nobel Laureates such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan (who survived attempted murder at the hands of Taliban terrorists for daring to pursue education in a local public school in Pakistan, something that was forbidden to girls by the insanity of the Taliban - she was only 15 years old at the time), wrote to her as if to a familiar friend of whom they heard vicious stories from third parties but did not want those stories to be true - and thereby was hoping to hear or provoke a reaction that justified their belief in her “goodness,” her Nobel “nobility.” It did not work. I wonder how long it will take before they have the same experience with such wonderful individuals as Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, and other such figures in the world forum who hide behind good intentions claiming to lead mankind to higher consciousness and understanding and making the world a “better place” while hurling guilt trips on the world as a whole and receiving affirmations and accolades from entertainers and high society with inferiority complexes, all the while harbouring the worst kind of evil in their hearts. A point that all these folks should take into consideration: a Nobel Peace Prize does not elevate anyone, and it cannot since one’s outer deeds need not be a mirror of the soul.
The story of Aung San Suu Kyi should be a warning to the world, but I doubt much of the world will bother to take time for introspection or to figure out the irony. Last week, on Easter Sunday, in Alberta, Canada, a battalion of police officers surrounded a church, prohibiting worshippers from coming and before that, jailing the pastor, all in the name of COVID. It is all in the name of public safety - do we not care about spreading and dying from the coronavirus? That is the message they have been propagating for over one year and are still trying to peddle even now after the vaccines have been released. And the world governments and their health experts such as Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx in the United States have such a pristine record of “good intentions” that, for them, lies in the name of good intentions is the way of life going forward -after all, why would you give up controlling the masses now?! (Ah, Dr. Fauci… he could definitely benefit from reading this article!) But who can judge the intents of the heart?
Why is all this important regarding the advent of the Antichrist? The Apostle Paul said it best in 2 Thessalonians 2:7-10:
“For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.”
Why is the world so easily fooled? The answer to that question can be simple, but is intentionally complicated by people who do like the implication of that answer. Without the Cross of Calvary, and in particular, the life and example of Jesus Christ who died on it, anyone, indeed everyone is setting themselves to fall for lies that come from the evil spiritual darkness that comes from the heart of sinful mankind. Think about the implications of the Lord Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in that famous passage in John 3:16-19:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not have believe in Him has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgement, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
And for this reason, the world will continue to fall for the diabolical marketing of Satan…especially when he can put such wonderful decorations as the Nobel Prize on a monster!