RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ms. Suu Kyi will appear Tuesday to lead her country’s defense against allegations of genocide before the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The Myanmar military has persecuted the country’s ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority for years. During two brutal ethnic-cleansing campaigns in 2016-17, the military reportedly oversaw the murder of people in their homes, the rape of women and girls, and the arson of entire communities. In the aftermath, more than 800,000 Rohingya have fled and sought refuge in Bangladesh.

After Ms. Suu Kyi’s 15 years under house arrest for criticizing the regime, many outsiders, especially her longtime supporters in the West, thought that she would use her position of power and moral authority to curb the military’s excesses. Instead, Ms. Suu Kyi is defending the crackdown, claiming that Rohingya terrorists are creating an “iceberg” of misinformation about the military’s treatment of the group.

During my term as United Nations high commissioner for human rights from 2014-18, I was troubled by the extent of Ms. Suu Kyi’s efforts to defend the military. Among many worrying signs, her Facebook page—which she uses for almost all her public communication domestically—singled out the story of a Rohingya survivor of sexual violence with a red banner reading “Fake Rape.” Some apologists tried to explain away her behavior by saying that as state counselor, Ms. Suu Kyi is a figurehead who has to bend to the military’s whims. But one would expect some resistance from a supposedly principled dissident.

Instead, two years later, she’s defending the military’s brutality before the international court. Claiming that critics underrate the threat of terrorism, Ms. Suu Kyi has described her trip to The Hague as a defense of Myanmar’s “national interest” against accusations from abroad. Her support for the persecution of the Rohingya has helped it win popular approval. As one rally organizer said, “if a country’s leader says a lemon is sweet, we have to say it is sweet.”

But domestic political maneuvering and convenient fictions won’t help in proceedings before the International Court of Justice, where facts matter most. And the facts are piling up. In September, the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar concluded that “Myanmar is failing in its obligation to prevent genocide, to investigate genocide and to enact effective legislation criminalizing and punishing genocide.”

It was Gambia that last month pushed for Myanmar to be held to account at the ICJ, and the Gambian officials’ words should bear on all signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention. “It is a shame for our generation that we do nothing while genocide is unfolding right under our own eyes,” said Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou.

The ICJ proceedings could have a real impact on the lives of the half-million Rohingya who remain in Myanmar, in the same international intervention has affected past conflicts. When asked to look at a similar situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the court found that Serbia had violated its duty to prevent and punish genocide. It imposed provisional measures, including an order that the Bosnians be able to seek and receive international aid and a proclamation of foreign nations’ right to intervene militarily. Gambia has asked the court to grant similar measures to compel Myanmar to halt its persecution of the Rohingya. If the court rules in favor, its decision will be legally binding and could be enforced by the U.N. Security Council.

In a 1991 essay titled “Freedom From Fear,” Ms. Suu Kyi wrote that “concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.” As civilian head of Myanmar’s government, she has gone to great lengths to smother the truth about the Rohingya’s suffering and block any path to justice. Her administration has denied U.N. human-rights investigators access to the country, restricted aid workers from helping the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya still living in Rakhine State, and bulldozed many of the villages that remained after a mass exodus.

While Myanmar’s diplomats have said the government doesn’t accept or agree with U.N. agencies’ reports, they will find it harder to maintain their position now that Ms. Suu Kyi, the de facto head of government, has engaged with the ICJ.

“It is not power that corrupts but fear,” Ms. Suu Kyi wrote while under house arrest. “Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it.” She has proved she’s no exception to that rule.

Prince Zeid, a Jordanian diplomat, was U.N. high commissioner for human rights, 2014-18.