San Suu Kyi in the dock

Not since the atrocities of Rwanda in 1994 and the Bosnia war in the 1990s when human life was treated with total disdain have there been such terrible stories of terror, murder and rape. I'm talking about the killing rampages by the Burmese military against the Muslim Rohingya people. Most British national newspapers, including my own, The Times, have had reporters in Bangladesh talking to the Rohingya refugees cowering in makeshift camps on the border. Their stories are so appalling that I cannot believe the whole world is not outraged. When there were atrocities being committed against the Muslim ethnic Albanian community in Kosovo by President Milosevic's Serb troops, Nato stirred itself from complacency, largely, actually, as a result of Tony Blair's anger at what was being shown on television every day, and the 1999 Nato bombing campaign began, forcing Belgrade to retreat. The Nato mission was properly mandated by the UN to avoid a "humanitarian crisis". Well, there has already been a humanitarian crisis in Burma. The consequences of this crisis can be seen in the camps in Bangladesh. The women's accounts of what the soldiers did to them and to their children bring back memories of the worst massacre in modern times - the killings and rapes in Rwanda when up to a million people of the Tutsi tribe were slaughtered by the ruling Hutu government troops 23 years ago. The Rohingya women and their children and their husbands were treated by the Burmese forces as scum. The women were gang-raped, sometimes in front of their husbands. One man forced to watch his wife being raped screamed and screamed until a soldier sliced off his head, according to one report in The Times. Children were seized and thrown into a fire. The Pope went to Burma, now Myanmar, and called for reconciliation but did not accuse the government of genocide, even though he knew of the reports of killings and rapes. The UN has had no compunction about referring to the slaughter as genocide. There is no other word for it. If genocide is proven, then the woman who, until this year, was regarded around the world as a saint, could face charges. San Suu Kyi, who looks like a saint, behaved like a saint all those years she was under house arrest for opposing the Burma miitary junta, and as a saint became the de facto leader of the country with the approval of the junta, has not once condemned the junta for the rapes and killings. It is absolutely astonishing. How can she live with herself? It is perhaps the biggest fall from grace that the modern world has ever seen.