Who Does Myanmar's Leader Think She Is?

Let's see if this seems eerily familiar...

A young upstart wins the Nobel Peace Prize around the same time that he rises to the presidency via populist promises of reform and transparency. 

But once he's in power, not only do reform and transparency seem to be the furthest things from his mind, but he actually goes in the opposite direction and starts spying on opposition journalists and cracking down on whistleblowers - all while publicly criticizing others for just such behavior. 

Yes, that young upstart is Obama. But those details are also reminiscent of Aung San Suu Kyi, the political leader of the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, aka Burma. 

And if Alfred Nobel were alive today to see what these two laureates have been up to since cashing their prize checks, then the original "Daddy Warbucks" who used the profits from his most lucrative and deadly invention - dynamite - in order to fund the annual awards which bear his name, might just want a refund... or two. 

Remember Obama was awarded the Nobel just after taking office? In comparison, Suu Kyi won her peace prize just before she ascended to power. 

It's no secret that Obama spied on the Associated Press (as well as on the Trump campaign), nor that he sent the IRS after the Tea Party.  

Indeed, even the left lampooned him for (unsuccessfully) sicking the DOJ on WikiLeaks: 

By the time Obama left office though, Julian Assange was taking political asylum from the same type of cockamamie sexual assault allegation that the left all too infamously uses as a political Swiss Army knife nowadays, and award-winning journalist Barrett Brown had been sentenced to 63 years in federal prison and $890,250 of restitution. Meanwhile, Chelsea Manning was still in military prison even though Obama used the information she provided to Wikileaks on the campaign trail. Only begrudgingly it seemed, did Obama finally commute her sentence just before he left the Oval Office. 

All told, the transparency-touting, a supposedly-friendly and whistle-blower--protecting Obama administration was in reality the most opaque in recent memory and it prosecuted more whistleblowers than all of its predecessors - combined.

Now, Aung San Suu Kyi's leftist regime in Myanmar is starting to feel like déjà vu. 

Recently, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Burmese journalists from Reuters who were investigating 10 extrajudicial killings in Myanmar, were sentenced to 7 years of hard labor each while Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi looked on. Her lack of vocal criticsm seemed deafening. Then, last week, calls for Suu Kyi to pardon the journalists were reignited by reports of the UN General Assembly indicating that the tribunal which they were afforded amounted to a show trial. 

And none of this is to excuse the at-best lackluster leadership Reuters provided (not) combating such serious corruption and hypocrisy here in America - including its spartan coverage of the show trial of yours truly without even the slightest mention of the phrase "human rights." Indeed, given the soft approach Reuters and the other worldwide wire services took to similar transgressions by Suu Kyi's Nobel-winning counterparts here in the U.S., is it any wonder that she feels that she'll be allowed to skate through this similarly unscathed? Why wouldn't she bet against journalism when the real journalists - like Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo - are jailed and/or otherwise silenced while the fake journalists run interference for those in power rather than hold them accountable and the most poignant truths of the 8-year presidency only make it to a mass audience disguised as comedy?

The author, Marty Gottesfeld is an Obama-era political prisoner. To learn more about his case or donate to support him, please go to FreeMartyG.com. 

Prior to publication, the U.S. State Department responded to a request for comment and referred FreeMartyG to this September 28th statement which says that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for the Burmese government to "immediately release jailed Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and to strengthen and protect freedom of expression and the press."