"Condemning Suu Kyi, a former dissident and Nobel peace prize winner, for not using her position as a megaphone to address the problem may be emotionally satisfying but does not help those most in need," Horta and Janelle Saffin, a senior Australian Labor Party official, wrote in a joint statement.

Mounting international criticism of Ms Suu Kyi "is obscuring the military's responsibility in the crisis", they wrote.

Kyi has been hung out to dry while Myanmar’s generals – who misruled the country for decades – have been allowed to step back as the conflict escalates,” they wrote in a statement published by Project Syndicate on Thursday.

“So, rather than focusing solely on Suu Kyi, the international community should be pressing the military and the Rakhine State parliament to work alongside the government and other parties toward peace.”

United Nations investigators have cited evidence of mass rapes, torture, the slaughter of babies and the burning of families alive by Myanmar security forces in the country's western Rakhine state, home to more than one million Rohingya.

But Horta and Saffin warned that a UN investigation into the atrocities that was approved last month "will not put an end to the violence and may even inflame an already volatile situation".The UN Rights Commission in Geneva will send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar to investigate what the UN says could amount to "ethnic cleansing" and crimes against humanity.

As international criticism of Ms Suu Kyi has grown since then, the 72-year-old, who formally holds the title State Counsellor, has denied any ethnic cleansing, while Myanmar's military has warned against the UN intervention and described Rohingya as "Bengali interlopers", despite them having lived in Rakhine for generations.
Horta’s defence of Ms Suu Kyi came four months after he co-signed a letter with more than a dozen other Nobel peace prize winners which criticised Ms Suu Kyi, saying "we are frustrated that she has not taken any initiative to ensure full and equal citizenship rights of the Rohingya".
The UN has described Rohingya in Buddhist-majority Myanmar as among the world's most persecuted people.
In the statement from Yangon, Saffin, who has a long history of pushing for democracy in Myanmar, and Horta said that "given that atrocities are still being committed it would be premature to excuse or defend any of Myanmar's leaders".
"But we should identify the right targets for criticism," they said.

“Among all of the stakeholders, Myanmar’s military has the most power to end the conflict.”

“ If the (military) generals cannot move beyond their traditional modus operandi of command, control and, in this case, containment, they should bear the blame for the crisis.”

Horta and Saffin said Myanmar's generals "never intended to let a civilian government hold them to account", referring to elections in late 2015 which Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won in a landslide.

The election was hailed as ending half a century of brutal military dictatorship.
"It is simply wrong to say that Suu Kyi has done nothing in the face of the horrors being perpetrated in Rakhine," Horta and Saffin said.

"One must remember that Myanmar is undergoing a fragile political transition, under a constitution that gives the military a leading role in national politics, while constraining Suu Kyi," they said, adding the military's commander-in-chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, has little responsibility but far more power.

Horta and Saffin said the international community should help provide services and defend the rule of law in Rakhine.

Ms Suu Kyi has acknowledged disappointment over the state of her country 12 months after being swept into power on a wave of optimism, and said she is prepared to step down if people are dissatisfied with her leadership.