Aung San Suu Kyi's Lost Honours

In a damning report, the United Nations has called for the leadership of Myanmar's armed forces to be prosecuted for genocide over their attacks on the country's Rohingya minority. The report also placed blame on Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's civilian leader, who failed to take action to stop the attacks. Genocide is the most serious charge the UN can make against a government and it's rarely proposed.

Torture, murder, rape, sexual slavery and imprisonment are among the crimes documented in Kachin, Shan and Rakhine. An estimated 700,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee the violence over the past year. As a result of her silence and inaction, countless high-profile honours previously bestowed on Aung San Suu Kyi are now being revoked or retracted. Most recently, councillors in Edinburgh voted to strip the Nobel peace prize winner of her Freedom of the City award.

Such honours have also been revoked in Oxford, Sheffield, Newcastle, Glasgow and Dublin. In the Irish capital, musician Bob Geldof handed back his Freedom of the City of Dublin award as he did not wanted to be associated with Aung San Suu Kyi, who he labelled a "pig" and "a handmaiden to ethnic cleansing". Councillors in Dublin subsequently voted to revoke Aung San Suu Kyi's Freedom of the City award in December 2017. The U.S. Holocaust Museum also withdrew her human rights award in March of this year.