Guest contributor

Fergus Harlow

Three enduring myths helped set the stage for Myanmar’s 2021 military coup, all of them centred on Aung San Suu Kyi and her role in the Rohingya crisis: 

1. That she remained silent on the plight of the Rohingya.
2. That she was complicit in genocide. 
3. That she defended the military at The Hague.

In a recent article, I argued that these accusations rest more on inference than on substantiated fact, and that they have become obstacles to justice. 

I argued that the international media’s refusal to define the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) as a terrorist organisation combined with the persistent refusal of the U.N. to acknowledge the inter-communal nature of the conflict in Rakhine (Arakan) State distorted public understanding of Myanmar’s crisis.

The responses I received to that article have been revealing. “Accusations are not the only evidence,” one critic wrote. “She agreed with the arrest and imprisonment of journalists who tried to uncover the truth, then defended the regime in court.”

When Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested, however, Win Htein, as a senior National League for Democracy (NLD) government minister, openly called it an “entrapment” orchestrated by the military—not something the civilian government endorsed. 

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi believed the country had to adhere to due legal process, whether the journalists were innocent or guilty. If they could be rescued by executive fiat, so could anyone. 

Her 2019 appearance before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague followed the same reasoning. She wasn’t there to defend military generals—she was there to defend Myanmar’s right to handle its own internal prosecutions through domestic mechanisms. 

She described the many investigations underway, asking “Can there be genocidal intent on the part of a state that actively investigates, prosecutes and punishes soldiers and officers who are accused of wrongdoing?”

Yet these are complex points of contention, harder to argue than the common sentiment that followed: “This author ought to be ashamed. What happened in August 2017 was NOT an inter-communal conflict. This was the military committing genocide … against unarmed civilians.”

The conflict in Rakhine State is inseparable from inter-communal riots and other forms of sectarian violence that occurred in 2012, 2014 and 2016. In 2017, 

The International Crisis Group described a direct link between the riots in Rakhine State in 2012 and the formation of ARSA in their wake. 

At a press conference with Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson condemned the attacks by ARSA “that initiated this violence” and recognised “the military’s responsibility to respond to terrorist or other insurgent attacks.” 

Intent on drawing the military into an international incident, and seeking to establish an Islamic State, ARSA’s tactics were unequivocally acts of terror. 

These included forced conscription from Rohingya villages, the use of civilians as human shields, widespread arson, the execution of community leaders, and threats of death to those who resisted. Dozens of moderate Rohingya elders were murdered.

Though the U.N. may have struggled to acknowledge the inter-communal nature of the violence, their widely publicised independent fact-finding mission still ultimately found no evidence that the civilian government “directly participated in planning or implementing security operations or were part of the command structure.” 

As for whether Aung San Suu Kyi willingly condoned or enabled the military, the report concluded that “information presently available to the Mission does not allow such conclusion on reasonable grounds.”

As journalist Bertil Lintner warned, distortions around the role Aung San Suu Kyi and her civilian NLD government played in the Rohingya crisis were “very damaging to any attempt to widen the civilian space in Myanmar’s current military-dominated power structure.” 

A 2016 report by CARE International likewise noted that international coverage was “exacerbating” inter-communal violence.

In a 2017 Eurasia Review article, Kang Siew Kheng put it bluntly: “The international reaction to lambast Ms Suu Kyi and Myanmar is unhelpful to all parties. It feeds the ultra-nationalist rhetoric that a democratic Myanmar faces an existentialist crisis.” By 2018, signs of an impending military coup were already visible. 

As researcher Nyi Nyi Kyaw noted in the book From Grassroots Activism to Disinformation, Western media coverage of the Rohingya crisis fuelled a backlash within Myanmar. 

Nationalist narratives exploded online. Many in the Buddhist majority became convinced that the West had turned against their country—and that Suu Kyi had brought the storm upon them.

A retired Burmese army officer, speaking to Mizzima News, captured how deep this paranoia ran: “They now believe she’s a sabotage agent. The global criticism of military operations in Rakhine is viewed as a UK-US conspiracy—one orchestrated by Aung San Suu Kyi herself.”

During riots in Meiktila, Mandalay Region, in 2016, Win Htein spoke over many months to my colleague, Alan Clements. He described how Suu Kyi and her allies did not stand idle. 

His voice trembling, he recounted how she urged police intervention, how he personally intercepted busloads of would-be rioters, how NLD volunteers distributed food and clothes to displaced Muslim families.

But when the Rakhine crisis exploded a year later, they were blindsided. “We lost the media war,” Win Htein confided. “We didn’t expect the problem to become that huge. ARSA was successful.” The damage to Myanmar’s civilian rule had been done.

It is not enough, now, for foreign governments to sanction Senior General Min Aung Hlaing or recognize the National Unity Government (NUG). 

What’s needed is a moral reckoning—with how easily the world turned on a woman who risked everything for her people, and how quickly the nuance of Myanmar’s complex crisis was replaced with a convenient villain, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Fergus Harlow is a writer, scholar, and human rights advocate. He is the Director of the Global Campaign UseYourFreedom.org, which calls for the release of unlawfully imprisoned State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and all democratic leaders in Myanmar.

He co-authored Burma’s Voices of Freedom and Aung San Suu Kyi From Prison and a Letter to a Dictator with Alan Clements, providing an in-depth exploration of Myanmar’s political crises and the resilience of its people.

Harlow’s work focuses on the intersections of democracy, spirituality, and global human rights, amplifying the voices of those fighting for freedom in Myanmar and beyond.

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