Aung San Suu Kyi Stripped of Freedom of Oxford Award

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi delivers a speech to the nation over Rakhine and Rohingya situation.

London, MINA – Britain’s Oxford city council on Tuesday withdrew the “Freedom of Oxford” award it granted to Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, over her lack of a response to abuses against Rohingya Muslims in her country, KUNA reported.

The award, which was given to Suu Kyi in 1997, was “in recognition of her long struggle for democracy and her personal links to Oxford,” read the council’s motion.

Bob Geldof called Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, “a handmaiden to genocide” as he returned his Freedom of the City of Dublin award in protest over his fellow recipient’s response to the repression of Rohingya Muslims.

The political activist and Boomtown Rats frontman said he would be a hypocrite to share honours with “one who has become at best an accomplice to murder”.

Over 600,000 people of the Rohingya community have fled violence, and what was deemed “ethnic cleansing” by the United Nations, in their native Rakhine State to Bangladesh since August.

Based on statistics, some 60 percent of the refugees are children, one out of four of whom suffer malnutrition. (T/RS5/RS1)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)