Former British Prime Minister David Cameron released his memoirs on Thursday, in which he records his disappointment with Myanmar leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi on her stance to distance the country from its Rohingya Muslim minority by claiming they were Bangladeshi.
‘For The Record’ is a chronicle of Cameron’s personal as well as professional life, covering the period between 2010 and 2016 when he was in charge at Downing Street during which he had close interactions with Suu Kyi.
“By the time she [Suu Kyi] came to visit London in October 2013, all eyes were on her country’s Rohingya Muslims, who were being driven out of their homes by Buddhist Rakhines. There were stories of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing. The world is watching, I told her. Her reply was telling: ‘They are not really Burmese. They are Bangladeshis’.”
Cameron is candid about his disappointment with the pro-democracy campaigner’s handling of the crisis, which saw thousands of Rohingyas fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh to escape persecution by the Myanmar junta.
The former UK PM recalls: “The disappointment came from Burma. I had visited the long-time military dictatorship a year earlier [2012], just after it had taken its first steps towards democracy by holding by-elections. No UK PM had visited since independence in 1948.
“I met the pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi, who would soon run for the presidency, and reflected on what an amazing story hers could be: from 15 years of house arrest to transforming her country into a real democracy.”
However, that promise of democratic transformation was hit by the Rohingya crisis, which Cameron covers among his many foreign affairs challenges while in office before he resigned in the wake of the June 2016 Brexit referendum.