Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi is globally revered for her patient, peaceful struggle for democracy, which will finally see her take power next week – but a clash revealed in a new biography of her paints a rather different picture, Telegraph reports.
According to the book, Suu Kyi lost her temper in 2013 after a robust interview with BBC Today programme presenter Mishal Husain and muttered off-air: “No-one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim.”
The book reveals that the 70-year-old president of Myanmar’s National League for Democracy refused to condemn anti-Islamic sentiment and massacres of Muslims in Myanmar when she was repeatedly asked to do so by Husain, the first Muslim presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme, during the interview.
Her response was: “I think there are many, many Buddhists who have also left the country for various reasons. This is a result of our sufferings under a dictatorial regime.”
The incident, which took place in 2013 after the interview about anti-Muslim violence, is the latest to raise eyebrows internationally about Suu Kyi’s attitude towards Myanmar’s Muslim minority.
Her National League for Democracy party sailed to victory in November’s 2015 election but it did so without any Muslim candidates, and her government will have no Muslim ministers.
She has also been criticised for her failure to condemn the persecution of the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, 140,000 of whom still live in miserable conditions in internally displaced persons camps more than three years after violent clashes with the local Buddhist majority.
While Suu Kyi, affectionately known as “The Lady”, will not be Myanmar’s president after the still-powerful military refused to budge on a clause in the constitution, she is set to rule by proxy through her nomination Htin Kyaw and remains by far the most influential politician in the country.
The latest indication of her attitude comes in a new biography called “The Lady and the Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s Struggle for Freedom”, written by journalist Peter Popham.
“I thought it was worth including in the book because it just feeds into the ambiguity of her position regarding this issue,” he said.
“One has great admiration for her and her life story and courage, but nobody believes anymore that she is a person without any faults and without her own prejudices and limitations.”
However, he does not believe she is prejudiced against Muslims, pointing out for example that her first serious boyfriend was from Pakistan and that one of the people who persuaded her into politics in 1988 was a prominent Burmese Muslim intellectual.
In a country which remains largely anti-Muslim, he believes she has kept quiet on her own views in order to secure power for her party, which takes power officially next week.
For Muslims in Myanmar though, the story is more complex. Many still support Ms Suu Kyi, but there are increasing concerns that she may not have as much sympathy for their plight as they had hoped.