Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is set to lose a Scottish honour, the Freedom of Edinburgh, over her handling of the Rohingya crisis in the country.
If the decision tabled before the Edinburgh City Council is cleared later this week, it will follow UK cities of Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle similarly revoking their Freedom of the City awards from the 73-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Suu Kyi had been presented with the Scottish capital’s highest honour in 2005, when she was still in the Opposition and under house arrest. She was hailed at the time as a beacon of democracy.
However, in November last year, Frank Ross, Edinburgh’s Lord Provost, wrote to her praising her “immeasurable moral courage and influence” and asking her to allow the safe return of the Rohingyas, who had been forced to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, to return to the Rakhine province.
Having received no reply to his letter, Ross finally tabled a motion to strip the Myanmar State Counsellor of her Scottish title this week.
Cllr Ross’ motion raises “the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Northern Rakhine and in the refugee camps of neighbouring Bangladesh”, expresses “disappointment” that there has been no communication from Suu Kyi and says the Freedom of the City award should therefore be removed.
The first time the honour was awarded was in 1808 and Queen Elizabeth II, her husband Prince Philip, actor Sir Sean Connery and anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela are among some of its famous recipients. A magnolia tree was also planted in Suu Kyi’s name on Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh at the time.
A series of UK institutions have been distancing themselves from the Nobel Peace Laureate in the wake of the Rohingya crisis.
A portrait of the leader hanging prominently at the entrance of St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University, where she studied, was moved into storage last year as one of the first moves to register a protest over the crisis that has been described by the UN as “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” and led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands.
