Amnesty International has withdrawn its most prestigious human rights award from Aung San Suu Kyi, following what it described as a “shameful betrayal” of the values she once stood for.
It is the latest in a series of accolades to be withdrawn from Aung San Suu Kyi, including the US Holocaust Museum’s Elie Weisel award and Freedom of the City awards, which were revoked by Edinburgh, Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle. Canada revoked her honorary citizenship last month. Calls to revoke Suu Kyi’s 1991 Nobel Peace Prize have so far been rebuffed by the committee that oversees it.
Aung San Suu Kyi received the ambassador of conscience award in 2009, while under house arrest, for her role in championing peace and democracy,after spearheading the opposition movement to the feared military junta..She was described as “a symbol of hope, courage and the undying defence of human rights” by Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s then secretary general.
On 11 November, Amnesty's General Secretary General Kumi Naidoo wrote to inform her the organisation is revoking the award. Half way through her term in office and eight years after her release from house arrest, Naidoo expressed the organisations disappointment that she had not used her political and moral authority to safeguard human rights, justice or equality in Myanmar, citing her apparent indifference to atrocities committed by the Myanmar military and increasing intolerance to freedom of expression. Saying in the letter that her ambassador title could no longer be justified.
“Our expectation was that you would continue to use your moral authority to speak out against injustice wherever you saw it, not least within Myanmar itself,” Naidoo wrote in the letter.
Today the Myamar authorities and citizens leapt to her defence calling the move 'childish.' But institutions that once showered Suu Kyi with titles are rapidly distancing themselves from a leader they argue is doing little in the face of the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya muslim minority. Suu Kyi has also been widely accused of being apathetic or complicit in the plight.
More than 700,000 Rohingya people remain in Bangladesh, having fled a brutal military crackdown that began in August 2017. UN investigators said that during the campaign, Myanmar’s military carried out killings and gang rapes and arson with “genocidal intent”, and called for the commander-in-chief and five generals to be prosecuted for the gravest crimes under international law.
Yanghee Lee, the UN special investigator on human rights in Myanmar, said she believed Aung San Suu Kyi was in “total denial” about accusations of violence.
“Without acknowledgement of the horrific crimes against the community, it is hard to see how the government can take steps to protect them from future atrocities,” said Naidoo.
Amnesty International added that Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration had stirred up hatred against Rohingya by labelling them “terrorists”, obstructed international investigations into abuses, and failed to repeal repressive laws used to silence critics. ''Her government has sgielded the secrity forces from accontability, stirred up racial hatred and denied the scale of the atrocities.
In September, Aung San Suu Kyi defended the imprisonment of two Reuters journalists who were given seven-year jail terms after investigating the massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Rahkine state. The sentences were widely condemned by international governments, human rights groups and the UN as a miscarriage of justice and a symbol of the major regression of freedom of expression in Myanmar. She is yet to comment on Amnesty’s decision herself but has in the past arrogantly shrugged off questions about withdrawn awards.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/aung-san-suu-kyi-stripped-of-amnestys-highest-honor/
https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Letter-from-Kumi-Naidoo-to-Aung-San-Suu-Kyi-EMBARGOED-13-Nov.pdf
Time to strip her off her Nobel Peace Prize too. Please sign the following petition.
https://www.change.org/p/take-back-aung-san-suu-kyi-s-nobel-peace-prize
