In the paraphrased words of Bruce Wayne, you either die the hero or live long enough to become a fucking asshole. In the case of my next pick, the world would be a better place today if they had just died the hero.
I will be adding some much-needed diversity to this draft by taking the first brown person, first woman, and first second Nobel Peace Prize winner (wait, what?). Team Hokie selects Aung San Suu Kyi, the current State Counsellor (aka prime minister) of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.
Suu Kyi’s early life and political involvement make her later heel turn all the more perplexing, so I’ll cover things briefly. She was born in 1945 and had a diverse upbringing, earning multiple advanced degrees from Western schools and living in New York and London before returning to Burma in 1988 to lead the pro-democracy movement.
A military junta, which had seized power in 1988, called a general election in 1990. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) received 59% of the votes, which would have put her in position to be Prime Minister. Instead, the results were nullified and the military refused to hand over power, placing her under house arrest. She championed non-violence as protest and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her efforts.
She spent 15 years of a 21-year period under house arrest and survived multiple attacks / assassination attempts. She received the Congressional Gold Medal from President Bush in 2008 while imprisoned. Her house arrest was lifted in 2010 when the country’s military made an arrangement with the opposition, resulting in the first election in over two decades in 2015. In this election, Suu Kyi’s party won power and she became State Counsellor, equivalent to a Prime Minister–remember, this is through an arrangement with the military.
Her ascendency from hero to pure fucking asshole did not take very long once she had acquired power. Since 2016 she has silently ignored (or, more accurately, encouraged) one of the worst ongoing humanitarian crises in the world: the Rohingya Genocide.
The total Rohingyan Muslim population of Myanmar is was over 1 million people, primarily in Rakhine State, where they’ve been present since potentially as far back as the 15th century. Despite this, they’ve been denied citizenship from predominantly-Buddhist Myanmar and have suffered human rights violations for decades. This violence has escalated since 2016 with support of the Burmese military, and the implicit support of our asshole Suu Kyi.
In 2018, a study estimated that more than 24,000 Rohingya had been killed in the preceding 12 months alone. Many died while being burned alive in their homes as entire villages were razed. Additionally, the study estimated that over 100,000 Rohingya had been beaten, 36,000 thrown into fires, and 18,000 women and girls raped at the hands of the military and the local militias.
Did our champion of peace and democracy do anything? No. To cover this up, Suu Kyi’s government has destroyed evidence, such as flattening burnt villages and mass graves, and has cracked down on the media. In 2017, two Reuters journalists were jailed by the police and were held for almost 18 months despite international outcry. Suu Kyi herself has largely ignored the genocide and humanitarian crisis her government has created, using positively Trumpian logic along the way:
- she stated tensions were due to a “climate of fear” because global Muslim power is perceived as “very great”
- she falsely claims that violence is happening on both sides
- she asked the US Ambassador not to use the word Rohingya because they “are not recognized as among the 135 official ethnic groups” of Myanmar
Groups around the world have revoked awards previously bestowed on Suu Kyi, though as of this writing she still holds her Nobel Peace Prize.
Current team:
- Steve Bannon, destroying democracy and installing alt-right regimes worldwide
- Aung San Suu Kyi, overseer of ethnic cleansing, genocide, a crackdown on journalism, and an all-around humanitarian crisis