Aung San Suu Kyi and her foreign admirers must help the Rohingyas
They have more clout than they admit
Sep 9th 2017

Aung San Suu Kyiとその外国の支持者たちはロヒンギャをたすけなければならない。
彼らは認めている以上に影響力を持っている。



THE reports are horrifying: soldiers and militiamen surrounding villages, raping women, decapitating children, herding men into buildings and setting them ablaze. The Burmese army is letting few outsiders into the northern part of Rakhine state, near the border with Bangladesh, so it is hard to be certain about the scale of the atrocities. But the UN says that well over 150,000 refugees have fled to Bangladesh since August 25th, with 35,000 crossing the border in a single day this week. They are the lucky ones. Satellite images reveal burning villages across northern Rakhine, and bodies have been washing up on the shores of the river that separates Myanmar from Bangladesh (see article). The victims are Rohingyas, a Muslim minority that has been persecuted by the Burmese authorities with varying degrees of ferocity since the 1980s. 

decapitating ：首を切り落とす
herding：集める
ablaze：炎上させる
ferocity：残忍な行為

Today’s government is led by Aung San Suu Kyi, herself a victim of persecution by past military regimes, and winner of the Nobel peace prize for her long vigil for democracy. But she seems no more sympathetic to the Rohingyas’ plight than her jackbooted predecessors. She denies that there is any systematic abuse by the security services, claiming instead that they are simply trying to hunt down organised Rohingya militants who have attacked police and army posts. Pleas from the UN, neighbouring governments, aid agencies and even her fellow Nobel laureates to curb the violence and allow humanitarian aid to flow to the victims have had no effect. She is not even willing to use the term Rohingya; her government dismisses the 1m-strong group that has been present in Rakhine since precolonial times as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. 

vigil：徹夜・祈祷
plight：深刻な状況
jackbooted：高圧的な
Pleas：申し立て
dismisses：忘れ去る
-strong：〖数詞の後で〗…人の〈集団組織〉

Ms Suu Kyi’s initial reluctance to take up the Rohingya cause was understandable, though not admirable. The vast majority of Burmese share the official view, that Rohingyas are foreign interlopers; many also imagine that, as Muslims, they are plotting against Buddhism, the religion of the majority. When sectarian riots broke out in 2012 between Rohingyas and Rakhines, a largely Buddhist ethnic group inhabiting the same region, the local media painted the Rohingyas as the aggressors, even though they came off much the worse. Moreover, Ms Suu Kyi has little authority over the army, which granted itself the right to regulate itself (and the police) before handing power to her civilian government. Why take on an unpopular fight that she had almost no prospect of winning? 

interlopers：侵入者
aggressors：侵略者

But the violence in Rakhine has reached such an unconscionable level that there can be no justifying continued passivity. Whether it is popular or not, the first duty of any government is to keep the people it governs alive. Even if Ms Suu Kyi cannot rein in the army, she should at least denounce its behaviour, and make clear to ordinary Burmese the horrors it is unleashing in their name. She has managed to face the generals down once before, after all, during her campaign for democracy, and retains immense moral authority. 

unconscionable：過度の
passivity：無抵抗な様子
horrors：惨事・悲惨さ

Give and take
By the same token, Western governments have been reluctant to take Ms Suu Kyi too strongly to task, for fear of undermining the transition to democracy that they advocated for so long. The time for such delicacy is past. Democracy is of little worth if it entails mass displacement and slaughter. Foreign donors should make it clear that continued development aid depends on efforts to end to the violence. 

By the same token：同じ理由で・それと同じで
displacement：(人物などを強制的に)移住[移動]させること

Best of all would be to try to change the army’s behaviour by adopting sanctions that punish it directly. It is heavily involved in business, with investments in everything from jade-mining to mobile networks. The top brass, in particular, benefit from sinecures in and payouts from this empire. Should America and other countries reinstate penalties for firms that do business with companies linked to the army, the generals’ wealth would be imperilled. That might make them reconsider their conduct in Rakhine. The Burmese army is not easy to influence, but economic and diplomatic isolation do seem to have played a part in persuading it to surrender power in the first place. To spare the Rohingyas further suffering, such sanctions should be deployed again. 

sinecures：名誉職
reinstate：復活させる
imperilled：危うくする
spare　：たすける・難を逃れる

ロヒンギャの虐待だが、Aung San Suu Kyiは何もしていない。彼女が何も出来ないというのが正しい。軍に対して発言できないからだ。ブータンと一緒で、異民族を追い出そうという争いが背景にある。この著者は世界が軍に制裁をしたらどうかと言うが、あまり期待は出来ない。結局ブータンと一緒で、１００万人がバングラディシュに逃げるしかないのだろう。ブータンからネパールに逃げたネパール系ブータン人は３０万人だった。こじれた民族の争いは解決できそうにない。

水曜日。今日は海野塾がある。ではまた明日。