Canada’s Parliament Moves to Strip Honor for Myanmar’s Leader

Eleven years after Canada granted honorary citizenship to Myanmar’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the House of Commons voted unanimously to revoke it.

The action on Thursday afternoon, which requires Senate approval to take effect, came a week after the House of Commons passed a motion declaring the treatment of Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar’s government to be genocide. Myanmar’s military is facing widespread allegations that it is carrying out ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya and the United Nations has recommended that its top commanders be tried for genocide.

“If you’re an accomplice of genocide, you won’t have honorary citizenship here,” said Gabriel Ste-Marie, the opposition member of Parliament who put the motion forward, after the vote. Earlier in the House of Commons, Mr. Ste-Marie, a member of the separatist Bloc Québécois party, charged that the killings had “unfolded under the watchful eye of the de facto head of government: Aung San Suu Kyi.”

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was honored by Canada for her protracted effort to bring democracy to Myanmar, has avoided criticizing the military’s actions, which have caused an estimated 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to seek refuge in neighboring Bangladesh since August 2017. About 10,000 people have been killed in Myanmar’s Rakhine State according to the United Nations.

Refugees have described fleeing nightmarish scenes of executions, rape and village burnings conducted by members of Myanmar’s military.

Last year, one woman at a camp in Bangladesh said that soldiers pulled her infant son from her arms and flung him to its death in a fire before gang raping the mother. In addition to her son, she said the military killed her mother, her two sisters and her younger brother.

Instead of challenging her military, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has often chided the rest of the world for, in her view, turning a blind eye to violent acts by armed Rohingya militants against members of other ethnic and religious groups in Rakhine. Local officials estimate that about 50 people have died because of those attacks.

Over the past year, several politicians in Canada have called for revoking Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s citizenship, an honor which has been given to only six other people including Nelson Mandela, the South African liberation hero, and, posthumously, Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis.

The vote on Thursday was preceded by a suggestion from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Parliament could take the step.

“Whether she has citizenship or not doesn’t help the Rohingyas,” Mr. Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “Parliament granted her citizenship, Parliament can take it away. But we’re focused on the millions of people who are suffering either in place or as refugees.”

Canada’s Senate, which will not sit again until Tuesday, must now pass a similar motion before Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s citizenship can be annulled.

source: nytimes.com

صوت البرلمان الكندي بالإجماع، لتمرير قرار يقضي بسحب الجنسية الكندية الفخرية من “أون سان سو تشي” مستشارة الدولة في ميانمار، وذلك خلفية أعمال القتل الوحشي والجرائم التي تعرضت لها أقلية الروهينجا المسلمة.

وقال السيد آدم أوستن، السكرتير الصحفي لوزيرة الخارجية الكندية “دعمت حكومتنا هذا الاقتراح استجابة لفشل أون سان سو تشي، المستمر في التحدث علنا ضد الإبادة الجماعية

لـ “الروهينجا”، وهي جريمة يرتكبها الجيش الذي تتقاسم معه السلطة”.

وأضاف” أن كندا ستواصل دعم الروهينجا من خلال المساعدات الإنسانية، والعقوبات الموجهة ضد جنرالات الجيش في ميانمار”.

وكانت زعيمة ميانمار، سو تشي، الحائزة على جائزة نوبل للسلام، قد حصلت على الجنسية الكندية الفخرية عام 2007 .

وقد صوت البرلمان الكندي الأسبوع الماضي أيضا بالإجماع على مقترح للاعتراف بأن حملة القمع الوحشية ضد أقلية الروهينجا المسلمة في ميانمار تشكل “عملا من أعمال الإبادة الجماعية”.. وفي فبراير الماضي، فرضت كندا عقوبات على عضو رفيع المستوى في الجيش الميانماري بموجب قانون “العدالة لضحايا المسؤولين الأجانب الفاسدين” .

وتواجه ميانمار انتقادات دولية واتهامات موثقة بالتطهير العرقي بعد أن فر نحو 700 ألف من أبناء أٌقلية الروهينجا في إقليم أراكان إلى بنجلاديش المجاورة ابتداء من أغسطس العام الماضي بعد حملة إبادة وحشية قامت بها سلطات ميانمار، وأدانتها الأمم المتحدة.