YANGON — An international gathering about the plight of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya Muslims boasts a star-studded cast, with three Nobel Peace laureates among those calling on the world to wake up to the unfolding tragedy. But fellow winner and pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi will not be among them. She wasn't invited. During her 15 years under house arrest, Suu Kyi won admiration across the globe for her fiery speeches and scathing criticism of the military regime that ruled Myanmar, or Burma, at the time. After her release in 2010, when ruling generals handed over power to a nominally civilian government, she won a seat in parliament. The 69-year-old says she is a politician and that she never sought to be a human rights champion. Critics note she is carefully choosing her battles, in part because she has presidential ambitions. In a predominantly Buddhist country of 50 million people, where there is much animosity for the 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims, Suu Kyi (pronounced “Suu chee“) has opted to remain silent, even as the world watched in horror while more than 3,500 hungry, dehydrated Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants washed ashore in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand this month. The international gathering on Tuesday at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, will feature video statements from Nobel Peace Prize winners Desmond Tutu, José Ramos-Horta and Mairead Maguire. Others, like philanthropist George Soros, who escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary, and former Prime Minister of Norway Kjell Magne Bondevik, will also speak. They will focus on concrete ways to end the decades-long persecution of Rohingya — and the need to speak out. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor,” Tutu, who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to South Africa's brutal apartheid regime, says in his video statement. “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” Myanmar's transition from dictatorship to democracy has been a bumpy one. Despite early euphoria about much-touted political reforms, the accompanying freedoms of expression had a dark side, lifting the lid off deep-seated resentment toward the dark-skinned Rohingya minority. With hard-line Buddhist monks fanning the anger, machete-wielding mobs started taking to the streets in 2012, killing up to 280 people and forcing another 140,000 into crowded, dusty internment camps. They have little access to school and adequate health care, nor can they move around freely, paying hefty bribes if they want to pass police barricades, even for emergencies. The government insists they are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh and has denied them citizenship, adding to the desperation that sparked an exodus of an estimated 100,000 Rohingya in the last three years. Authorities refuse to identify them as “Rohingya” and use “Bengalis” instead. Suu Kyi also avoids the term and generally refers to them as “Muslims.” — AP
