Canada revokes honorary citizenship of Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s civilian leader, was stripped of her honorary Canadian citizenship on Tuesday over her inaction on military violence against the country’s Rohingya Muslims.

Senators unanimously passed a measure revoking her citizenship and declaring the treatment of the Rohingya by Myanmar’s government to be a genocide. The same actions were unanimously approved last week by the House of Commons.

Those votes were prompted in part by a United Nations investigation that in August called for six top generals in Myanmar to be tried on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled across the border to Bangladesh since August 2017, when Myanmar’s Buddhist-majority security forces began a violent campaign in Rakhine state that has included executions, gang rape and the burning of hundreds of villages. About 10,000 people have been killed, the UN says.

Like many people in Myanmar, Suu Kyi has steadfastly denied reports of ethnic cleansing, going so far as to call them fake news. Though she said this month that the crisis “could have been handled better,” she says other countries have ignored violent attacks by armed Rohingya militants against members of other ethnic and religious groups in Rakhine. About 50 people have been killed in those attacks, according to local officials.

The Rohingya crisis and Suu Kyi’s response to it have dramatically transformed her global reputation as a democracy icon.

Sen. Ratna Omidvar, who introduced the motion in the Canadian chamber, said that while the military wields considerable power in Myanmar, Suu Kyi — who holds a post comparable to prime minister — is not without power herself.

“Stripping her of her honorary citizenship may not make a tangible difference to her, but it sends an important symbolic message,” Omidvar said.

Omidvar also cited the imprisonment of two Reuters journalists who were reporting on the atrocities. Suu Kyi has defended the judge’s verdict and sentence in that case.

Suu Kyi received honorary citizenship from Canada in October 2007 for her pro-democracy campaign in Myanmar, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

© 2018 New York Times News Service