As the Rohingya Muslim community from Myanmar is believed to be on the ultimate stage of genocide, the de facto leader of the country and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is accused of islamophobia and is being slammed for her inaction on the alleged attempt of the ethnic cleansing of the community from the country.
An online petition on a platform called Change.org has demanded that the Nobel Peace Prize for peace given to her should be retrieved following her allegedly islamophobic and undemocratic stance in case of Rohingya Musims.So far, (as of November 2, 2016) the petition has been supported by over 87,000 people.
The petition refers to an incident in 2013, when Suu Kyi was interviewed by Mishal Hussain – a BBC anchor, who had questioned her stand on the plight of the Rohingya Muslim community in the country. It is claimed that Suu Kyi, who was allegedly visible upset had said, “No one told me that I was to be interviewed by a Muslim.”
The petition acknowledges her effort to bring a functional democracy into the country, but further states, “This opens up the prevailing question regarding Suu Kyi’s position on the Muslim minority in Myanmar. There has been no official position from Suu Kyi with regards to the human right violations that have been rampant as experienced by the Rohingya minority.”
Rohingya Muslims is a minority community from a Buddhist-majority country, which has been systematically persecuted and expunged from the national narrative, according to the news reports. Recently, TIME had reported that a study conducted by a UK-based university documents a systematic deterioration of the Rohingya’s situation since communal violence broke out in June 2012 in Burma’s Rakhine (formerly Arakan) state. Removed from Burma’s 135 officially recognised ethnicities in 1982, the Rohingya have faced discrimination for decades. It has been reported that in then heavily militarised area, soldiers have blocked access for aid workers and are accused of raping and killing civilians.
Suu Kyi has not directly commented on those calls or on statements from human rights monitors, although she has urged the military to exercise restraint and act within the law, according to the news reports.
Renowned author and Kyi’s biographer Peter Popham writes in an article, “..there is nothing in Suu Kyi’s earlier life to lead one to think that she might be bigoted. As I revealed in my biography of Suu Kyi, The Lady and the Peacock, her first serious boyfriend when she was a student at Oxford was a Pakistani (he went on to become a top diplomat for his country), she lived for 20 years in multicultural Britain without manifesting any known anti-Muslim hostility, and one of the key people who persuaded her to get involved in Burma’s democracy uprising was Maung Thaw Ka, a Muslim journalist and author who subsequently died in jail.”
Despite her background, Suu Kyi has failed in voicing condemnation of the acts against the Muslin community, and never has made a statement in their support. On the contrary, she is being criticised for her overseas trips as the foreign minister of the country while the ongoing crisis threatens with a complete ethnic cleansing of the community.
Following these circumstances, the online petition has demanded confiscation of the Nobel Peace Prize given to her.
“The Nobel Prize is the highest prize only to be given to ‘people who have given their utmost to international brotherhood and sisterhood’. These peaceful values need to be nurtured by the laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize, including Suu Kyi, until their last days. When a laureate cannot maintain peace, then for the sake of peace itself the prize needs to be returned or confiscated by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Therefore, we hereby demand the Chair of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee confiscate or take back the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi. Only those who are serious in keeping the world peace may be awarded such a coveted prize,” demands the petition, which is addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee 2016.