YANGON: Aung San Suu Kyi was once an unassailable champion of Myanmar's powerless. But the opposition leader's refusal to speak up for a persecuted Muslim minority at the heart of a migrant crisis has cast doubt over her moral force -- and even earned a gentle rebuke from fellow Nobel laureate the Dalai Lama.
Images of hungry migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh hauled from vessels to Southeast Asian shores after months at sea have spurred calls for immediate humanitarian action to be matched by moves to address the root causes of the crisis.
Regional nations are gathering in Bangkok Friday to discuss both issues.
Attention has swung to one of the key departure points for the migrants, strife-torn Rakhine state in western Myanmar, where tens of thousands of stateless Rohingya Muslims live in dire displacement camps desperate to leave.
But as Myanmar's government wavers between offering some assistance to stricken migrants and denying any responsibility for their exodus, international rights groups looking for a moral beacon have found little support from Suu Kyi.
Her absence from the discussion has been so conspicuous that the Dalai Lama this week urged Suu Kyi to throw her weight behind the Rohingya.
"It's very sad. In the Burmese (Myanmar) case I hope Aung San Suu Kyi, as a Nobel laureate, can do something," he told Thursday's edition of The Australian newspaper.
The Buddhist spiritual leader said he recognised the difficulty of her position in a nation where expressing sympathy for the Muslim group brings ready condemnation.
"But in spite of that I feel she can do something," he added.
Suu Kyi spent more than 15 years locked up by the former junta for her tireless campaign for democracy in Myanmar.
Her personal sacrifice, which tore her from her young children and dying British husband, and eloquent pleas that the nation's long-suffering population should have "freedom from fear" won her a place among the world's most lauded peacemakers.
Yet since her release from house arrest in 2010, Suu Kyi's role has been recast from a defiant human rights defender to a hard-nosed political actor preparing to lead her opposition party into elections later this year.
The Nobel laureate "has been a huge disappointment in her continuous failure to stand up for human rights" in Myanmar, said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
While Myanmar's government carries the main responsibility for the plight of the Rohingya in the country, Robertson lamented the veteran activist's failure to use her "moral authority" to press for a better deal for them.
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