Suu Kyi's Muslim-hatred comes to the fore after BBC interview

March 25, 2016

She is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a beacon of saintly integrity in the West who remained under house arrest for 15 years in her native Burma.

However, there is another side to Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi that sits at odds with her iconic image.

After the BBC Today presenter Mishal Husain gave Suu Kyi a rough ride during a BBC interview, Suu Kyi lost her composure and was heard to mutter angrily off-air: ‘No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim.'

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The spat between the two prominent and famously elegant Asian women has only just emerged, and followed a heated interview with the 70-year-old president of Myanmar's National League for Democracy on the Today programme, according to a new book, The Lady And The Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi And Burma's Struggle For Freedom, by Peter Popham.

Suu Kyi's equivocal attitude towards the violence suffered by Burma's Muslim minority has alarmed even her most dedicated fans.

When she was repeatedly asked by Husain to condemn anti-Islamic sentiment and the wave of mob-led massacres of Muslims in Myanmar, she declined to do so. ‘I think there are many, many Buddhists who have also left the country for various reasons,' she replied. ‘This is a result of our sufferings under a dictatorial regime.'

Much of the country's huge Buddhist majority dislikes its small Muslim community with a passion, so it is thought Suu Kyi did not want to alienate her supporters.

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Muslims are only 4 per cent of Burma's population. The Rohingya Muslims, who have borne the brunt of the violence, are a smaller minority still. The Rohingya are explicitly forbidden from becoming citizens of Burma and have no political weight whatsoever.

Husain, 43, was the first Muslim presenter of Radio 4's Today programme.

But while often seen as a symbol of the BBC's commitment to diversity, she is, herself, thumpingly posh.

The mother-of-three and Northampton-born daughter of Pakistani parents was educated at private school and Cambridge University, where she read law.

Known as the Lady of Burma, 70-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi is a pro-democracy campaigner and the opposition leader in Myanmar, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

The leader of the National League of Democracy, has led an extraordinary life, despite spending 20 years of it under house arrest.

She was born in Rangoon – now Yangon – but when she was just two years old her father was assassinated.

Her father, Aung San, had founded the modern Myanmar army and negotiated independence from the British Empire in 1947.

But he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year.

When she was 15, in 1960, her mother was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal and Suu Kyi accompanied her there.

She completed her education in New Delhi, gaining a degree in politics. She went on to obtain a Masters in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford.

She returned to Myanmar in 1988, shortly before a military junta took power and launched her career in politics in earnest.

Influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi's philosophies, and her own principles as a Theravada Buddhist, she entered politics to work for democratisation.

She helped found founded the National League for Democracy in September 1988.

In 1990, Suu Kyi's NLD party received 59 per cent of the votes in a general election called by the military junta.

But the results were nullified and the military refused to hand over power, causing an international outcry.

She was placed under house arrest, during which time she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

She used the $1.3million prize money to establish a health and education trust for the people of Myanmar.

While under house arrest, she spent her time reading about philosophy, politics and biographies that her husband had sent her.

She was offered the option of freedom, as long as she never returned to her country. But rather than accept the opportunity to live an un-political life with her husband and two children, she chose to not abandon her people.

In November, her opposition party secured a landslide victory in the Burmese elections.

A legacy of rule of military junta means Suu Kyi cannot become president herself, however, this week it was announced that she would become a minister in Myanmar's new cabinet when it takes power next month.

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News Network
April 26,2020

Apr 26: The remarkable story of an airman who overcame prejudice to become one of only a handful of Indian fighter pilots in the First World War has emerged in newly-released archive files by the UK's Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).

Lieutenant Shri Krishna Chanda Welinkar is one of the thousands of moving stories from the war preserved in family correspondence and being brought alive as part of a digitisation project.

The never-before-published files contain thousands of letters, pictures and other papers sent between the Commission and the next of the kin of First World War dead.

Among them is the story of Welinkar, who hailed from Bombay in colonial India. After much hardship and discrimination, he eventually became a pilot and went missing while on patrol over the skies above the Western Front in June 1918.

His family had to wait nearly three years before they finally knew for certain that he had died, and his grave was located.

“For everyone who died in the First World War, there was inevitably a partner, parent or child back home who had questions. The heartbreaking letters in CWGC's archive give us an insight into what it was like for those families trying to come to terms with their loss,” said Andrew Fetherston, chief archivist for CWGC.

“They are stories that show desperate searches for closure, former enemies uniting and, on many occasions, the sad realisation that a missing loved one would always remain so. We are pleased to be able to make this invaluable piece of World War history accessible to a new generation and help deepen our understanding of how the First World War impacted those who were left behind,” he said.

Welinkar was one of the 1.3 million Indians who answered the call to fight for the British Empire. Nearly 74,000 never saw their homeland again and are remembered today in cemeteries and memorials throughout the world, including France, Belgium, the Middle East and Africa.

Welinkar was a well-educated man studying at Cambridge University. He trained to become an aviator in Middlesex and wished to join the Royal Flying Corps, later known as the Royal Air Force.

Upon attempting to enlist, Welinkar encountered the same prejudices as his other fellow Indian airmen and was encouraged to become an air mechanic instead.

He was eventually given a commission in the Royal Flying Corps as an Officer. In 1918, he was posted to France and patrolled the skies above the Western Front.

In June 1918, Lieutenant Welinkar embarked on what would be his final patrol; he did not return and was reported missing. His fate remained unknown for many months afterwards.

The newly-released e-files chronicle the remarkable discovery of Welinkar and his final resting place long after the war had ended. Colonel Barton, who knew Welinkar, acted on behalf of his mother and helped find her missing son. They spoke to former enemies and honed their search to the grave of an unidentified man, buried by the Germans as “Oberleutnant S.C. Wumkar” in a grave in Rouvroy, Belgium.

The body was later moved and reinterred in Hangard Communal Cemetery Extension but it wasn't until the vital clue, found in the original German burial records in February 1921, that it was confirmed beyond doubt this grave was of Welinkar's.

In May 1921, Colonel Barton, on behalf of Welinkar's mother, requested that a Commission headstone be placed on the grave with the following personal inscription: “To the Honoured Memory of One of the Empire's Bravest Sons”.

This records – known as Enquiry Files – are part of a collection of nearly 3,000 files which have never been made available to the public before. Nearly half have been digitised so far, alongside a previously unreleased collection of more than 16,000 photographs held in negatives in the Commission's archive.

The files, internally referred to simply as E-Files, contain correspondence between the CWGC and the next of kin of the war dead. They often contain letters, typed memos between Commission staff and on occasion photos, maps and diagrams.

CWGC only holds an enquiry file for a small proportion of the 1.7 million people it commemorates from the Commonwealth. Today it is only possible to release those surviving records from the First World War because correspondence with families of Second World War casualties often involves people still alive today and cannot be made public for many years, due to the UK's data protection rules.

To date, more than 1,300 of the surviving 3,000 First World War enquiry files have been digitised.

The CWGC commemorates the 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women who died during the two World Wars. It also holds and updates an extensive and accessible records archive, while operating over 23,000 locations in more than 150 countries and territories.

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News Network
May 22,2020

May 22: A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight on its way from Lahore to Karachi, crashed in the area near Jinnah International Airport on Friday, according to Civil Aviation Authority officials.

Geo News reported that the plane crashed at the Jinnah Ground area near the airport as it was approaching for landing. There were more than 90 passengers on board the Airbus aircraft. Black smoke could be seen from afar at the crash site, say eye witnesses.

There were no immediate reports on the number of casualties. The aircraft arriving from the eastern city of Lahore was carrying 99 passengers and 8 crew members, news agency AP said, quoting Abdul Sattar Kokhar, spokesman for the country’s civil aviation authority.

Witnesses said the Airbus A320 appeared to attempt to land two or three times before crashing in a residential area near Jinnah International Airport.

Flight PK-303 from Lahore was about to land in Karachi when it crashed at the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir, just a minute before its landing, Geo News reported.

Local television reports showed smoke coming from the direction of the airport. Ambulances were on their way to the airport.

News agency said Sindh’s Ministry of Health and Population Welfare has declared emergency in all major hospitals of Karachi due to the plane crash.

It’s the second plane crash for Pakistani carrier in less than four years. The airline’s chairman resigned in late 2016, less than a week after the crash of an ATR-42 aircraft killed 47 people. The incident comes as Pakistan was slowly resuming domestic flights in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg reported.

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Agencies
July 24,2020

The total number of global coronavirus cases has topped 15.4 million, while the deaths have increased to over 631,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

As of Friday morning, the total number of cases stood at 15,439,456, while the fatalities rose to 631,926, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.

The US accounted for the world's highest number of infections and fatalities at 4,034,831 and 144,242, respectively, according to the CSSE.

Brazil came in the second place with 2,287,475 infections and 84,082 deaths.

In terms of cases, India ranks third (1,238,798), and is followed by Russia (793,720), South Africa (408,052), Peru (371,096), Mexico (370,712), Chile (334,683), the UK (298,721), Iran (284,034), Spain (270,166), Pakistan (269,191), Saudi Arabia (260,394), Italy (245,338), Turkey (223,315), Colombia (218,428), France (216,667), Bangladesh (216,110), Germany (204,881), Argentina (148,027), Canada (114,398), Qatar (108,244) and Iraq (102,226), the CSSE figures showed.

The other countries with over 10,000 deaths are the UK (45,639), Mexico (41,908), Italy (35,092), France (30,185), India (29,861), Spain (28,429), Iran (15,074), Peru (17,654) and Russia (12,873).

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