A Nobel Prize in Genocide

Images copyright Kevin Frayer. Sauce: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/haunting-black-white-photos-rohingya-refugees-that-whole-world-needs-see-1643107
20 September 2017: Balukali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Refugees who are crossing or have just crossed into Bangladesh.

This is the sobbing face of a young Rohingya refugee, pleading with an NGO for some kind of aid. He is a Muslim, and the predominantly Buddhist nation of Myanmar has been actively displacing and murdering his people. You might assume it is a barbaric, totalitarian government that is carrying out this outrageous and blatant campaign of ethnic cleansing. The story isn't that simple: Myanmar's leader* today is Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for her tireless efforts to bring democratic reforms to her homeland.

So why the silence from Myanmar's first civilian head of state since the military junta that inspired Aung San Suu Kyi's quest to free her people? In fairness to her, the military still actively controls the country, and could take all the reins of power from her at any time. But her callousness toward the Rohingya is truly reprehensible. Her active involvement in driving all Rohingya out of Myanmar—or even just the tone she sets as someone who is treated with sacred reverence by many Burmese—is reprehensible.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/aung-san-suu-kyi-nobel-prize/540453/

Aung San Suu Kyi

The Nobel Peace Prize is worthless. It should have lost all its prestige when Henry Kissinger—architect of massive, illegal bombing that resulted in the death of countless innocent people—won. Or Obama, even. Remember that embarrassing event? No one could have known that Aung San Suu Kyi would turn into such a problematic leader. But her current behavior is conduct unbecoming of a great peacemaker.