Leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Prime Minister of Hungary,
Viktor Orbán (Photo: Claude Truong-Ngoc WikiCommons)

Hamed Chapman

The discredited civilian leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, has found an unseemly ally in the far-right nationalist Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, after they both described Muslims as one of the biggest threats facing their countries.

“The two leaders highlighted that one of the greatest challenges at present for both countries and their respective regions – Southeast Asia and Europe – is migration,” the Hungarian Government said in a statement following a meeting in Budapest early this month.

“They noted that both regions have seen the emergence of the issue of coexistence with continuously growing Muslim populations,” the statement warned.

The former Nobel Peace Prize winner has been widely condemned for remaining silent in the face of the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, as well as universities, including her own alma mater, have stripped her of honorary awards.

The UN described the mass killing of Rohingyas as ‘textbook genocide’, with more than 700,000 fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh in the most recent wave of violence in 2017.

Thousands of Muslims were raped and killed in the military crackdown which Suu Kyi refused to criticise.

The far right leader of Hungary has frequently clashed with the EU over his Islamophobic and anti-migrant views. A report by the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights has accused Orban’s Government of fuelling “xenophobic attitudes, fear and hatred”.

Last year, British Conservative MEPs came under fire for controversially supporting the Orban’s authoritarian government in a crunch vote that referred Hungary to the Council of Europe to be censured over its policies.