Malaysia stands behind Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi amidst jail sentence despite her disappointing response for the Rohingya crisis in the country.
Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah said although there should have been more progress on the rights and safety of the Rohingya community during her time as an elected official, 76-year old Suu Kyi’s is still vital to the Southeast Asian politics."We are supportive of her of course, although we wish she would have spoken up more on behalf of the Rohingya when she was a state counsellor of the country.
"We regret that she did not fulfil our expectations but nevertheless, her party managed to win the election before the coup d’etat that caused Myanmar to be ruled under the junta leadership now,” he told Sinar Daily in an exclusive interview on Dec 7.
He said he could not comment further since he did not know in great detail about the court proceedings and conviction of the ousted civilian leader.
Saifuddin, however, hopes things would settle down for the country as the court case had been resolved.
He also stated that the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar has become a regional matter with Malaysia being left to deal with the consequences."Myanmar considers this as an internal affair but Malaysia, on so many occasions, has stated that it has become regional matter.
"Because of what is happening in Myanmar, we are now hosting about 200,000 Rohingya refugees here.
"We have the moral rights to speak up on the issue, we cannot be indifferent about this,” he said.
Suu Kyi, whose party had won the general election in Myanmar in November 2020, was arrested on Feb 1 this year, following a coup that restored the military leaders to power.
This all happened while the country was facing the region’s worst Covid-19 outbreak.
She was sentenced to jail for four years on Dec 6 after being convicted of instigating dissent and violating Covid-19 regulations.
This is just a first in a series of verdicts that could lead her to life imprisonment.
The arrests, trials, and sentences were condemned as politically motivated by the United Nations, most European countries, and the United States.
Suu Kyi’s international image had borne the brunt of her response to Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority's crisis when she refused to speak out against both the brutal violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine.
She also remained silent when two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were sentenced to join.
The two were widely believed to have been set up after disclosing the military's atrocities.