Having countenanced international criticism on the Rohingya issue ~ fom Malala Yousufzai to Archbishop Desmond Tutu ~ Aung San Suu Kyi has broken her rather intriguing silence ever since she assumed charge as Myanmar’s de facto leader in January 2016. Her performance last Tuesday before an audience of bureaucrats and foreign dignitaries was wholly inadequate and astonishingly defensive of the establishment.

It was in the main a remarkable parroting of the language of the generals who had incarcerated her for close to two decades and made her a political legend. The credibility of her democratic credentials is now open to question as never before in her stormy career. There is little doubt that she made the statement after considerable international urging. Nor for that matter is there a scintilla of doubt that the purportedly democratic dispensation in Naypidaw is no more than a facade for junta control.

Far from acknowledging the persecution and plight of the predominantly Muslim ethnic group, she calculatedly stopped short of criticising the military, which has been accused of killing, rape and arson. And the impact of persecuting the “nowhere men” has transcended the frontiers of Myanmar to Bangladesh and India, indeed causing a flutter in the subcontinental roost. The communal dimension has even provoked Pakistan to summon Myanmar’s ambassador to the Foreign Office in Islamabad for a verbal demarche.

Neither Suu Kyi’s audience nor for that matter the comity of nations can be impressed with her assurance that the “security forces have been instructed to adhere strictly to the code of conduct and to avoid harming civilians”. Myanmar tragically bears witness to quite the contrary. Sad to reflect, the icon of democracy has played to the gallery of the GHQ by adopting a feeble approach to an ugly truth ~ more than 400,000 Rohingyas have fled the army’s massacre that the UN has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Suu Kyi was suitably vocal before she ascended the seat of authority. Far from being forthright on the crisis ~ as the democratic world had expected her to be ~ she is seemingly anxious not to ruffle feathers in the junta, let alone upset the applecart. Of course, she tried to mollify her critics by saying she was committed to restoring peace, but her version has been remarkably strained, even a mite sentimental ~ “We feel deeply for the suffering of all the people caught up in the conflict.” Such assurances can do but little to assuage the privation of the dispossessed.

Most Rohingyas have been stripped of their citizenship by the military. There is a hollow ring therefore to Suu Kyi’s assurance on repatriation of refugees who can establish they were residents of the country before they fled to avoid repression. In point of fact, they don’t have the documents to affirm their bona fides. This is at the core of the Rohingya tragedy.