On top of that, the military had been the only functional institution in Myanmar for over 50 years. During that time, there was no real court system, no free media, no private industry, and no significant educational institutions. Even before the military took over, the majority of the colonial government bureaucracy consisted of Indians that the British brought in with them, the vast majority of whom left with the British, gutting civilian institutions. The military controlled every aspect of everyone's lives. Their retreat from total control left an enormous institutional vacuum, with Buddhist monasteries left as the only nearly national stable institution (which has fed tensions with minority Muslim ethnic groups).
When I was working there a few years ago, people barely knew what the laws were for creating a corporation. No one knew how to verify who owned what land. The military suddenly allowed free press for the first time since the 1960s, and immediately a plethora of dubious publications sprung up to compete with the hilariously inaccurate government-run propaganda rag, the Light of Myanmar. People just weren't equipped to evaluate journalistic quality yet. So fundamental elements of a free society just weren't in place.
And the population was in many ways unprepared for democracy. Atrocious education and decades of propaganda make it difficult to rationally exercise democratic authority. Particularly when there are strong ethnic tensions, because the majority tends to abuse their authority to the detriment of the minority. Hence the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.
So Suu Kyi is left in a tenuous position. She can't allow dissent within her own party without risking fragmentation and a loss to a military-centric coalition. She can't let her own party run wild without risking unfettered ethnic cleansing and a military backlash/coup if their special privileges are revoked.
This latest move is disheartening for many reasons, but more than anything it is evidence of just how desperate the situation in Myanmar really is, despite whatever brief optimism grew out of the nation's partial democratization.
At any rate, are we even sure that this is the work of Suu Kyi's faction? It would be a pretty fiendish move for the military to suppress free speech and make it look like Suu Kyi's work, since (as we see here) it would weaken her status with the west. But I have no idea how to verify something like that.
If you don't execute everyone from the old regime, there are tons of rich people, executives, special interests, influential families, etc, that remain in place and are still important after the transition.
(The post-WWII Germany was full of ex-nazi hardcore sympathizers, and nazi executives and officials in all kinds of positions of power until the 80s or so). De-nazification (not the half-arsed, soon abandoned program of the same name [1]) was a big demand of younger germans in the 60s and 70s.
Now, if you do execute all important people from the old regime, on the other hand, you have now had yourself a taste of big corrupting power over others. And unless you kill every relative, friend, etc as well, you have a recipe for civil war and further bad blood between you and those that remained.
Conversely the South African "truth and reconciliation commission" seems to have played a part in the healing of that country - but at the cost of leaving crimes unpunished. Northern Ireland has opted for an intermediate approach of trying to draw a line under everything as quietly as possible - no truth, no justice, but no more killing.
Arguably many of the US's current problems stem from inadequately addressing the pro-slavery faction. At least now the question of "what is the significance of all these statues from the losing side of the civil war?" is back in the public consciousness.
You punish people to deter others for committing the same crime. The other benefit, revenge, has a scope that is too narrow to benefit the masses. So, if you are replacing an evil regime with a new regime and there is no possibility that the old regime will come back (apartheid has run by a small minority of the population) then there is no benefit from punishing past crimes. This is why the "truth and reconciliation commission" was so successful.
Very few countries can boast to such a peaceful political turnaround.
I'd say most countries in Eastern Europe and some in South America certainly can boast that. Political changes don't nessecarily have to be bloody, violent affairs.
Or such a slow descent into tyranny. Let's see when Julius Malema and his supporters eventually do call for the eradication of white people.
Wasn't Obama as well? And he maintained a torture camp, occupying forces, and tons of bombings.
The "Nobel Peace Prize" is a political tool, not some valuable metric.
Someone mentioned Kissinger having one as well...
Kissinger is also responsible for bombing of another Nobel Peace prize winner, however he ordered the secret bombing in Laos and Cambodia that destroyed Red Cross facilities shortly before getting his, rather than shortly after.
Yeah, it would have been awkward in the subsequent Nobel alumni meeting...
I don't really understand the detail of the situation of her release and taking power but I'm starting to suspect we may have been lied to, or at least given a drastically oversimplified version of events.
Such as?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people#Denial_of_the_...
I'm no policing expert, but I think a start might be arresting the assailants. I mean in a lot of cases, the videos are being posted to the assailant's Facebook. Now again, I'm no crack detective, but that seems like some evidence you could use to me.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/20/fact-check-aun...
"There are of course ways in which, with hindsight, the situation could’ve been handled better,"
“But we believe that in order to have long-term security and stability we have to be fair to all sides. We can’t choose who should be protected by rule of law,” she said."[1]
In the same speech she addressed the two recently jailed journalists with the following:
>"The judgement … had nothing to do with freedom of expression at all, it had to do with the Official Secrets Act,” she said. “I don’t think anybody has actually bothered to read it."[1]
There's a difference between playing the long game and being complicit.
[1] http://time.com/5394791/aung-san-suu-kyi-rohingya-crisis-han...
In a dictatorship, only one person's vote counts.
In a democracy, there are a lot of people whose votes count.
It may seem the same to you, but if you have to experience it you'd almost immediately see that it feels very different. I was a WHOLE lot more careful when I was living in a nation with a dictatorship. One slip up could throw away a lot of your life in a dirty developing nation prison cell.