"I AM just a politician,” she declared modestly in an interview back in 2015. “I am not quite like Margaret Thatcher, no. But on the other hand, I am no Mother Teresa either.”

These are the words of Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, who in 1991 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and described by the Nobel committee as “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless”.

Once a global symbol of the battle for human rights, Suu Kyi endured 15 years of house arrest by the military rulers she now defends, but has always insisted she must be judged only as a politician.

Last month, a very different judgement of sorts was made of Suu Kyi. Over the space of a few days, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague listened as she vainly tried to defend her country’s ethnic cleansing policies towards Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims.

That Suu Kyi had turned up in person to argue that there were no atrocities, mass murder, rape, torture and to ask the ICJ to drop the case, describing it as “incomplete and incorrect”, was a huge gamble on her behalf.

Ironically though, it wasn’t her vociferous vocal defence that seems to have been her undoing. According to the lawyers acting on behalf of the Gambia, which had brought the case against Myanmar with the backing of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, it was not the denials or the implausibility of Suu Kyi’s narrative that they found disturbing, but her silences.

But whatever the tactics she chose to deploy, her gamble to turn up at the world court and present her defence in person has undoubtedly backfired.

Yesterday, the ICJ finally announced they had ordered measures to prevent the risk of genocide the court believes the Rohingya still face at the hands of Myanmar’s security forces and Suu Kyi’s political acquiescence. The ICJ’s decision now sets up a full hearing on the allegations that have drawn international condemnation.

By any standards, the court’s decision is a swingeing indictment of the case Suu Kyi tried to make, and effectively eviscerates the last vestige of international credibility and reputation she had for standing up to an oppressive military dictatorship.

Some have suggested that as a civilian leader in a country where the generals call the shots, the one-time human rights defender had simply found herself caught politically between a rock and a hard place.

But in turning up personally at The Hague, Suu Kyi dispelled any lingering suggestions that this was the dilemma she faced.

Instead, Suu Kyi’s message to the international community that once lionised her should be seen for what it really means: do not meddle in Myanmar’s internal affairs.

Back home, all the signs are that her stubborn genocide denial has already reaped political dividends, sparking an outpouring of approval and bolstering support for her as well as for anti-Muslim nationalism.

The very fact that on returning to Myanmar from The Hague, Suu Kyi used a speech and televised address to the nation to play to Buddhist nationalist feelings, has only underlined the pernicious and potentially incendiary nature of her true motives.

For the inescapable – if cynical – fact is that all this isn’t a bad result for a leader who intends to run in the country’s general election this year.

By contrast for those Rohingya and other Muslims inside Myanmar who have borne the brunt of persecution at the bloody hands of the country’s armed forces, it must again be terrifying.

Since 2016, nearly one million Rohingyas have fled to refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh. In that time, reams of evidence by UN investigators detailing atrocities have piled up as rapidly as the corpses from the systemic persecution and genocide that has unfolded.

Given this, the decision issued yesterday by a panel of 17 judges at the ICJ is to be welcomed.

As Reed Brody, commissioner at the International Commission of Jurists pointed out, it will give the Rohingya their “first taste of justice”, even if there is still a long way to go before this order becomes reality and we see actual improvements in the lives of this persecuted people.

WHAT is important here is that ICJ’s orders are legally binding. That and the fact the decision was unanimous will give additional weight to the court’s measures and send out an unequivocal message to Myanmar and those in other nations hell-bent on ethnic cleansing and genocide.

As for Suu Kyi’s position, the ICJ’s decision also acts as stark reminder of how much more is at stake than the reputation or ambition of any one politician.

For far too long, international observers who had been familiar with Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy efforts buried their head in the sand, reluctant to place the responsibility for what was happening to the Rohingya on her.

Yes, at times the moral stain of ethnic cleansing did occasionally prompt early international condemnation, but the chilling

truth remains that this didn’t cause Suu Kyi to pay much of a price at home or to alter her approach to politics.

In retrospect, it’s telling that within the first two years of Suu Kyi’s term in office, the Rohingya had largely been driven from the lands of their birth – a feat that had eluded Myanmar’s military juntas for decades.

The initial legitimate fear in some quarters that Suu Kyi and her democratically elected government might risk reversing the transition towards democracy in Myanmar should it have ordered the military to cease operations against the Rohingya was perhaps understandable and to some extent genuine.

But the fact persists that in not speaking out, Suu Kyi ultimately condemned countless Rohingyas to death and terrible suffering.

Back in 2015, in very different times, Suu Kyi might have been right when she said she was neither Margaret Thatcher nor a Mother Teresa.

She has, however, now shown the true moral and political parameters within which she operates and how ugly they are.

Her dismissive attitude towards the charges made at the ICJ have only further consolidated the demise of her reputation as heroine-turned-villain.

Should Suu Kyi continue to play off Buddhist nationalist sensibilities for her own electoral benefit at the terrible expense of the Rohingya, then her historical place as good-politician-turned-bad will be complete.