THEY buried a murdered top lawyer in Myanmar yesterday. And the fear must be that with the body of Ko Ni they may also have buried the hopes of ending the long-standing brutal crackdown on the country's Muslim community, not least the Rohingya of Rakhine province. Ko Ni was a Muslim and a senior adviser in the National League for Democracy, the party that now holds power under the leadership of Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Ko Ni was gunned down as he arrived in Yangon airport after a foreign trip. The man who shot him in the head, has been detained. There is evidence that this was a carefully-planned, professionally-executed hit but no one is yet saying who might have ordered it At Ko Ni's funeral, the Muslim lawyer was described by a top NLD official as "irreplaceable". And it must be feared that the opportunity that Ko Ni represented for Myanmar and for Su Kyi herself is also now "irreplaceable". It can be argued strongly that, upon assuming power, "the Lady", as her adoring followers call her, should have acted immediately to end the persecution of her country's Muslim minority. Had she clamped on the leading Buddhist militant group, the "969" led by the fanatical monk Ashin Wirathu, she might have stemmed the tide of race hate that is disfiguring Myanmar. Su Kyi had always pursued a policy of extreme caution. Throughout her long house arrest, she always urged her followers to avoid violence and not to provoke the military junta that had incarcerated her and tens of thousands of NLD members. As the generals appeared to head back to their barracks and Myanmar edged toward civilian rule after the NLD won a landslide victory in the 2015 election, the Lady continued to counsel against any action that would trigger a military coup. The generals still controlled the interior and defense ministries and under the constitution they cobbled together, had given themselves an automatic minority in the parliament. Though constitutionally banned from the presidency because her late husband was British, Su Kyi is Myanmar's effective leader. The continuing plight of its Muslims however makes clear that she has failed to make the transition from inspired opposition to genuine leadership. When the army began their latest vicious crackdown on the Rohingya she had the authority to stop them. When Buddhist thugs continued to attack Muslims, she had the moral if not the actual authority to stop it. This she has failed to do. Is it really fear of a return of the military that has stopped her or is there a darker reason behind her inaction? It must not be forgotten that Su Kyi was caught on mike expressing anger at being interviewed by a BBC reporter who was a Muslim. Is Su Kyi herself tainted by Islamophobia? What she does now in the wake of the murder of a high-placed Muslim member of her own party ought to answer this question clearly. If the "Lady" does not crack down on Myanmar's murderous bigots and address the issue of the Rohingya by setting in train their path to the full Myanmar's citizenship that has been denied them, then many will argue she will be showing her true colors and that the Nobel committee should think seriously about removing the Peace Prize.
