Following Suu Kyi’s win in Myanmar, India hopes to strengthen the “traditional bonds of friendship”

File photo of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi with Indian Chief of Army Staff General MM Naravane and Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla alongwith Indian Ambassador Saurabh Kumar at Capital NayPyiTaw on October 5, 2020.

Yangon (Myanmar):  The Nobel Peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won  397 parliamentary seats out of 476 in Myanmar, according to official results released on Wednesday. This performance is better than her party’s last performance in 2015 when it had won 348 seats in Parliament. The election had taken place on November 8.

Indian  Prime Minister Narendra Modi today congratulated Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD for victory in election in Myanmar. In a tweet, Modi  said ,“Congratulations to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi & NLD for victory in the elections. The successful conduct of polls is another step in the ongoing democratic transition in Myanmar. I look forward to continuing to work with you to strengthen our traditional bonds of friendship.”

Suu Kyi was under house arrest for 15 years till she emerged victorious in the first credible elections in recent times in her country five years ago. However, the 75 -year-old came under public scrutiny last year for her defence of the military against accusations of genocide against Myanmar’s Rohingya muslims, at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Reports suggest that about 8 lakh Rohingyas were forced to flee to Bangladesh in face of when an army crackdown on an alleged terrorist group in 2017 in Rakhine province, which is home to the minority Rohingya Muslims. 

A small West African country, The Gambia, had filed the case at the ICJ, accusing Myanmar of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. “The Gambia has placed an incomplete and misleading picture of the factual situation in Rakhine state,” Suu Kyi  had then told the UN’s top court.

In Myanmar, her victory though endorses the viewpoint that many among the nation’s ethnic Bamar majority see Western criticism of Suu Kyi as a betrayal, and they see her as a leader who can prevent the return of military rule in the country. However, it may be pointed out that in this election, the Myanmar Election Commission had announced that elections would not take place in many areas of Rakhine for security reasons which meant that the Rohingyas could not vote this time.

As far as India is concerned, Myanmar’s growing closeness to China in recent times has been a cause of concern even as New Delhi maintains a  cordial relations with both Suu Kyi and the Myanmar Army. The Modi government does make common cause with the Myanmar government on the Rohingya issue, and it also has two key infrastructure projects in Myanmar —a trilateral highway between India-Myanmar and Thailand, and the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit project that aims to connect mainland India to the landlocked Northeastern states through Myanmar. A port at Sittwe and an inland waterway are part of this project.

– globalbihari bureau