Dublin councillors have voted to revoke an award given to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to protest her handling of violence against Rohingya Muslims in her country, Irish media reported.
The vast majority of councillors backed the move to revoke the Freedom of the City of Dublin award, with 59 votes in favour, two against and one abstention, broadcaster RTE said.
Q&AWho are the Rohingya and what happened to them in Myanmar?
Show
Described as the world’s most persecuted people, 1.1 million Rohingya people live in Myanmar. They live predominately in Rakhine state, where they have co-existed uneasily alongside Buddhists for decades.
Rohingya people say they are descendants of Muslims, perhaps Persian and Arab traders, who came to Myanmar generations ago. Unlike the Buddhist community, they speak a language similar to the Bengali dialect of Chittagong in Bangladesh.
The Rohingya are reviled by many in Myanmar as illegal immigrants and suffer from systematic discrimination. The Myanmar government treats them as stateless people, denying them citizenship. Stringent restrictions have been placed on Rohingya people’s freedom of movement, access to medical assistance, education and other basic services.
Violence broke out in northern Rakhine state in August 2017, when militants attacked government forces. In response, security forces supported by Buddhist militia launched a “clearance operation” that ultimately killed at least 1,000 people and forced more than 600,000 to flee their homes. The UN’s top human rights official said the military’s response was "clearly disproportionate” to insurgent attacks and warned that Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya minority appears to be a "textbook example” of ethnic cleansing.
When Aung San Suu Kyi rose to power there were high hopes that the Nobel peace prize winner would help heal Myanmar's entrenched ethnic divides. But she has been accused of standing by while violence is committed against the Rohingya.
In 2019, judges at the international criminal court authorised a full-scale investigation into the allegations of mass persecution and crimes against humanity. On 10 December 2019, the international court of justice in The Hague opened a case alleging genocide brought by the Gambia.
Wednesday’s decision comes after more than 620,000 of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority fled across the border to Bangladesh, escaping a crackdown by the army which the refugees have said involved murder, rape and arson.
Suu Kyi has faced international criticism for her apparent failure to defend the Rohingya minority; a dramatic fall from grace for the Nobel peace laureate who spent years under house arrest in Myanmar.
“The daily oppression of the Rohingya people cannot be allowed to continue and if the revoking of this honour contributes to the pressure on the [Myanmar] government to respect their fellow citizens it is to be welcomed,” councillor Cieran Perry said, quoted in the Irish Independent.
The city council’s decision comes a month after musician Bob Geldof returned his own freedom award at Dublin city hall, as a protest against Suu Kyi.
The Red Cross estimates only around 300,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state since the mass exodus started in August, with around 300 continuing to cross the border each day.
Bangladesh and Myanmar last month signed an agreement to repatriate Rohingya refugees, although the United Nations at the time said the conditions were not safe for their return.