Dublin City Councillors to debate stripping Freedom of City from Aung San Suu Kyi

Dublin City Councillors will debate removing the freedom of the capital from Aung San Suu Kyi this morning.

Dublin City Councillors to debate stripping Freedom of City from Aung San Suu Kyi

Dublin City Councillors will debate removing the freedom of the capital from Aung San Suu Kyi this morning.

The Nobel Laureate received the honour in 2012.

However in light of her silence on the mass exodus of Rohingya people from Myanmar from the country's Rakhine state in what the UN's high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has called a "textbook case of ethnic cleansing", some politicians here say she should no longer hold the honour.

Cllr Nial Ring said: "Is there a form of ethnic cleansing, or genocide happening to the Rohingya people?

"If it turns out the reports (are correct) and are happening under the eye Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, I think our fellow members may agree to a rescinding of the Freedom of the City."

Mr Zeid noted the UN refugee agency says 270,000 people from Burma, also known as Myanmar, have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in the last three weeks, and pointed to satellite imagery and reports of "security forces and local militia burning Rohingya villages" and committing extrajudicial killings.

"The Myanmar government should stop pretending that the Rohingyas are setting fire to their own homes and laying waste to their own villages," he added.

He called it a "complete denial of reality" that hurts the standing of Myanmar, a country that had until recently - by opening up politics to civilian control - enjoyed "immense good will".

"Because Myanmar has refused access to human rights investigators, the current situation cannot yet be fully assessed, but the situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing," he said.

Mr Zeid said he was "further appalled" by reports that Burma's military is planting landmines along the border.

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