昂山素季：褪色的民主偶像

As pillars of smoke rose from Rohingya villages burning in western Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi this week finally broke her silence on a humanitarian crisis that has uprooted more than a quarter of a million people and laid waste to her reputation.

随着缅甸西部一座座罗兴亚人村庄燃起滚滚浓烟，昂山素季(Aung San Suu Kyi)上周终于打破了她在一场人道主义危机上的沉默，这场危机已造成逾25万人无家可归，也损毁了她的声誉。

In equivocal language, the freedom fighter and de facto leader of Myanmar said her government was committed to defending the human rights of “all the people of Rakhine”, the state engulfed in some of the worst violence since the country’s transition from military rule began in 2011. Terrified refugees streaming into Bangladesh told stories of shootings and the torching of homes by security forces and vigilantes.

这位缅甸的事实领袖、自由斗士含糊地表示，她的政府致力于维护“若开邦所有人”的人权。最近该邦发生了缅甸自2011年开始告别军事统治以来一些最糟糕的暴力事件。惊恐的难民不断涌入孟加拉国，诉说安全部队和肇事者向他们开枪、焚毁他们家园的故事。

Aung San Suu Kyi declined to mention by name the mostly Muslim Rohingya bearing the brunt of the violence. Instead she accused the media of faking news reports and building an “iceberg of misinformation”.

昂山素季拒绝提到罗兴亚人一词，而这场暴力事件中的主要受害者是罗兴亚穆斯林。相反，她指责媒体捏造新闻，建起了一座“虚假信息的冰山”。

This came after a week in which protesters in Pakistan set a picture of the Myanmar state counsellor’s beaming countenance alight and Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the country of “genocide”. Malala Yousafzai and Desmond Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi’s fellow Nobel laureates, all but scolded her to speak up on the Rohingyas’ behalf. A petition calling for her to be stripped of her 1991 peace prize had garnered nearly 400,000 signatures as of Friday.

之前一周，巴基斯坦的抗议者焚烧这位缅甸国务资政容光焕发的照片，土耳其总统雷杰普•塔伊普•埃尔多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)指责缅甸犯下“种族灭绝”罪行。同为诺贝尔和平奖得主的马拉拉•尤萨夫扎伊(Malala Yousafzai)和德斯蒙德•图图(Desmond Tutu)都为罗兴亚人发声，对昂山素季发出含蓄的谴责。上周五，一项要求剥夺1991年颁发给昂山素季的诺贝尔和平奖的请愿书已获得近40万个签名。

The scorn heaped on Aung San Suu Kyi seemed to mark a turning point for a woman who for decades enjoyed the admiration of the western world and the long-format ministrations of an adoring press, many of whom compared her to Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. With her trademark sarong and jasmine flower in her hair, she remains one of the world’s most recognisable people and an embodiment of hope for Myanmar’s political transition.

对昂山素季的强烈贬斥似乎标志着这位女性的一个转折点，几十年来她得到西方世界的敬佩，还有崇拜着她的新闻界的长篇推崇。其中许多人将她比作甘地(Gandhi)和纳尔逊•曼德拉(Nelson Mandela)。一身标志性的纱笼和发髻上的茉莉花，她仍是全世界最知名的人物之一，也是缅甸政治过渡希望的化身。

Now Aung San Suu Kyi seems preternaturally out of touch with world opinion. On Thursday, she said it would be “a little unreasonable” to expect her government to solve Rakhine’s problems after just 18 months in power. “We have to take care of our citizens, we have to take care of everybody who is in our country, whether or not they are our citizens,” she said, referring to Myanmar’s policy of rendering most Rohingya stateless.

现在昂山素季似乎不可思议地与世界舆论格格不入。她在上周四表示，期待执政仅18个月的她的政府解决若开邦的问题“有点不合理”。在提到缅甸的政策让绝大多数罗兴亚人失去国籍时，她表示：“我们必须关心我们的公民，我们必须关心在我们国家的所有人，无论他们是否是我国公民。”

The received wisdom is that she is powerless to contain the military, which holds on to three key ministries. “You cannot blame her because of the army,” says Win Htein, a stalwart of her National League for Democracy. Even some of her harshest critics acknowledge that it is the military men that should be called to task.

外界普遍认为她无力遏制军方，后者控制着三个关键部委。昂山素季所属的全国民主联盟(National League for Democracy, NLD，简称民盟)的资深人物温登(Win Htein)表示：“你不能因为军队的行为而责备她。”即便是昂山素季一些最严厉的批评者也承认，军方应该对此事负责。

“It is her moral duty to speak up,” says U Kyaw Win of the Burma Human Rights Network. “Unfortunately, she is not only siding with the military, she is siding with the propaganda.”

缅甸人权网络(Burma Human Rights Network)的觉温(U Kyaw Win)表示：“她在道义上有责任发声。可惜她不仅站在军队的一方，还跟宣传机构站在了一起。”

If this week felt like a defining moment for the reputation of the 72-year-old leader of Myanmar, perhaps it should not have. Aung San Suu Kyi has long echoed the official line that the Rohingya are “Bengali” nationalists being stirred to sedition by “terrorists”. Burmese nationalism and Buddhist extremism have surged with democratisation and the spread of communication technology in the former pariah state.

有人可能觉得上周对于这位72岁的缅甸领导人的声誉是一个决定性时刻，其实并非如此。昂山素季长期附和官方说法，即罗兴亚人是受到“恐怖分子”煽动的“孟加拉”民族主义者。随着这个曾经的“贱民国家”走上民主化进程，随着通信技术的普及，缅甸的民族主义和佛教极端主义近年抬头。

Yet even as Aung San Suu Kyi was being savaged abroad, some hardliners at home see her as too soft. Social media — possibly whipped up by the military — criticised her for being weak in the face of outside pressure over what they see as a Muslim insurgency in Rakhine. “It’s a total mirror image of outrage, and she is caught between these two views,” said one western diplomat in Myanmar.

然而，就在昂山素季在国外遭到抨击的同时，国内的一些强硬派认为她太软弱。社交媒体——可能在军方的煽动下——批评她在他们眼里的若开邦穆斯林叛乱问题上在境外压力面前表现软弱。常驻缅甸的一位西方外交官表示：“这完全反映了人们的愤怒，而她被夹在这两种观点之间。”

The conflicting forces buffeting her are in keeping with a woman who grew up in two worlds, wreathed in privilege in both. Born in Rangoon (today Yangon) in 1945, her father was assassinated when she was two. As a child, she was educated at Christian schools in Burma and India, where her mother was ambassador, then at Oxford, where she met her future husband, the late Michael Aris.

冲击着昂山素季的对立势力与她的成长背景相符，她在两个世界长大，在两边都享受着特权。昂山素季1945年出生在仰光，两岁时父亲遭暗杀。孩童时代的她在缅甸和印度——她的母亲是缅甸驻印度大使——的基督教学校接受教育，后来她前往牛津(Oxford)，在那里遇到了日后的丈夫，已故的迈克尔•阿里斯(Michael Aris)。

In 1988 she returned home to tend to her ailing mother, then was swept up in unrest against the ruling junta. This coalesced into the NLD, which seized on the photogenic daughter of Aung San, who is revered as a father of the nation. She lived for years in and out of house arrest, becoming the figurehead of an international solidarity movement.

1988年她回到家乡照料生病的母亲，随后卷入了反对军政府统治的动荡。反对派随后团结在民盟的大旗下，利用了被尊为国父的昂山(Aung San)将军上镜的女儿。多年来昂山素季反复遭到软禁，成为一场国际团结运动的代表人物。

After playing a key role in negotiations to end military rule, Aung San Suu Kyi led the NLD to victory in elections in 2015. Emerging from opposition as a revered but untested leader, she has been wobblier in power, providing little direction in key areas such as the country’s struggling economy. When journalists who had lionised her in captivity hit her with tough questions over Myanmar’s poor human rights record, her clipped responses have sounded thin-skinned or tin-eared.

昂山素季在结束军政府统治的谈判中发挥了重要作用，随后又领导民盟在2015年选举中获得胜利。作为一名反对派出身，备受尊敬但未经考验的领导人，她在坐上权位后相对缺乏魄力，在关键领域(比如缅甸不景气的经济)拿不出什么对策。当那些在她被监禁时吹捧过她的记者就缅甸糟糕的人权记录向她提出尖锐的问题时，她生硬的回答听起来既敏感又冷漠。

With Rakhine in flames, Aung San Suu Kyi’s honeymoon period in power has been short. Myanmar now faces a full-blown crisis that, according to António Guterres, the UN’s secretary-general, risks fuelling more grievances. Western donor nations built Aung San Suu Kyi up; the flaws of this strategy, and of this person, have been on display this week. Tough times lie ahead for “the lady” as she seeks to drive a middle course between her own people, many of whom are in an unforgiving mood about the Rohingya, and the outside world.

随着若开邦火光四起，昂山素季的执政蜜月期缩短了。用联合国秘书长安东尼奥•古特雷斯(António Guterres)的话来说，缅甸现在面临着一场全面危机，可能激起更多不满。西方捐助国当年捧起了昂山素季;这一战略、以及这个人的缺陷，在上周表露无遗。被尊称为“夫人”的昂山素季寻求在国民(其中许多人对罗兴亚人抱着不宽恕的情绪)和外部世界之间找到一条中间道路，她将迎来一段棘手时期。