Shocker from Suu Kyi: No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim

Even a Nobel Peace Prize isn't enough to curb the rising Islamophobia among the rank and file of global leadership. Forget Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and other assorted rightwingers from the Republican Party. This time it's the Lady of Burma who has raised the hackles for Islamophobes the world over, according to a Daily Mail report.

In a shocking turn of events, a new book on Suu Kyi (The Lady and The Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle For Freedom by Peter Popham) reveals how the head of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a landslide in the recently concluded general elections in Burma, had made a grossly offensive statement about being interviewed by BBC presenter Mishal Husain.

An off-the-record comment by Sui Kyi, just after she was pressed by Husain to make her stance clear on the thorny issue of Burma's Rohingya Muslims, a minority oppressed by the country's majority Buddhists, went like this: "No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim!" 

When Husain asked if the now 70-year-old Suu Kyi condemned the anti-Muslim persecutions and massacres, the Lady became defensive and said: "I think there are many, many Buddhists who have also left the country for various reasons. This is a result of our sufferings under a dictatorial regime."

The controversial events during the 2013 interview for BBC's Today programme have come to light in the wake of growing discomfort among Suu Kyi's international supporters over her stony silence on Burma's Muslim issue. Muslims have been battling relative electoral irrelevance for long, since they constitute only 4 per cent of Myanmar's population, of which the Rohingyas form a miniscule minority. In addition, the Rohingyas are forbidden from becoming Burmese citizens. As a result, both the military junta as well as the NLD-led civilian government that will assume charge from next month have not spoken up for their plight.

Mishal Husain, a Cambridge University-educated British Pakistani journalist, is a prominent face of the BBC and is known for asking tough, ideologically centre-left questions to her illustrious list of interviewees.

Suu Kyi, who is an Oxford alumna and a firm critic of the junta regime, has been known for three decades of pro-democracy campaign in the military-ruled Burma, of which she spent almost two in house arrest in Rangoon.  

But the latest controversy is likely to dent her beatific image, that of a champion of human rights, exactly where it hurts the most.