Aung San Suu Kyi has protested that ethnic cleansing is "too strong" an expression to use for what is happening to the Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine state. Her semantics will mean nothing to the luckless Rohingya. Their treatment at the hands of the Burmese army and the Buddhist thugs led by bigoted monks is murderous, brutal and unacceptable. As the United Nations begins a long-overdue inquiry into what has been happening to the country's one million strong Rohingya population, Suu Kyi took time out to give an interview to the BBC. After she last spoke to the UK broadcaster, she was heard on mike complaining that her interviewer had been a Muslim. This time the Nobel Peace Laureate did not attempt to play down what has been happening in Rakhine state. Even as she spoke, video was circulating on social medial showing Burmese troops and police mercilessly beating a Rohingya man as he lay helpless on the ground. But she also insisted that the violence was not all one way. She said that the army had a right to defend itself. Last year, in circumstances that are still unclear, nine soldiers were killed in an ambush. She also claimed that some Muslims are being killed by fellow Muslims, but she gave no details of such incidents. She did, however, protest that the 70,000 Rohingya who had fled to neighboring Bangladesh would be welcomed "home with open arms". This was a telling statement that, unfortunately, the BBC journalist failed to pick up. The Muslim Rohingya community has always insisted that they are Burmese citizens. Yet the former military junta refused them passports and citizenship and, most significantly, equality before the law. It was this marginalization of a significant minority that served to encourage Buddhist bigots led by militant monk Ashin Wirathu, founder of the 969 Movement, to launch attacks clearly designed to drive the Rohingya out of the country. As long as the Burmese state continues to deny normal rights to a million of its people, that minority remains in the firing line of racial intolerance and Islamophobia. Journalists who have interviewed Wirathu comment on his serene demeanor and soft-spoken voice. It is worth making the comparison with Suu Kyi, whose calm dignity during her long years of persecution by the military junta struck all foreigners who managed to meet her. But today, "The Lady", as she is called by her supporters, no longer looks so serene and dignified when she speaks of the horrors that are taking place in Rakhine State. She knows that what is happening there is indefensible. She doubtless realizes that the UN inquiry is going to detail the appalling atrocities that have been visited on the Rohingya. She probably expects that the UN investigators will decide that what has been happening, the destruction of businesses and communities and the herding of people into squalid camps "for their own protection" is indeed "ethnic cleansing". Suu Kyi's excuse that her government cannot yet enforce control over a military that retains key powers over internal security is wearing thin. She needs to bring prosecutions against those behind the anti-Muslim violence, be they police or army commanders or prominent Buddhist monks. But even before she does this, she must grant full citizenship to the Rohingya, whose exiles she now says she will welcome "home" with open arms.
