Suu Kyi’s honorary citizenship revoked
Burmese leader allowing unfolding genocide, according to UN report
OTTAWA— The House of Commons unanimously adopted the motion to revoke the honorary Canadian citizenship granted to Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, the one-time champion of democracy who is now seen as a disgraced bystander in the ethnic cleansing of her country’s Rohingya population.
The historic motion was unexpected but foreseeable, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said earlier this week that the honour Parliament had bestowed upon Suu Kyi could be reconsidered.
Bloc Québécois MP Gabriel Ste-Marie said that opening prompted him Thursday to ask a question to test the government’s resolve and then to rise immediately after question period to ask the Speaker to canvas if there was unanimous consent to immediately revoke the honour, which was granted in 2007.
Back then, Suu Kyi was seen as the courageous leader of her country’s opposition forces, and had spent most of two decades under some form of house arrest.
Although her party won elections after Burma made democratic reforms, Suu Kyi is constitutionally barred from the top leadership post because her children were born in the U.K.
In 2016, she became state counsellor, the country’s minister of foreign affairs.
She is widely viewed as having failed to use her moral power and democratic mandate to rein in the actions of the country’s military, which has attacked ethnic Rohingya in villages near the country’s border with Bangladesh.
Ste-Marie said his motion gave voice to his constituents’ feeling that it was not “logical” for Suu Kyi to retain her Canadian citizenship in light of what the United Nations is calling an unfolding genocide in her country.
A UN report called this week for the prosecution of the generals responsible for crimes under international law, including murder, rape, torture, sexual slavery, persecution and enslavement.
Ste-Marie had given a headsup to other party officials but hadn’t decided for sure if he’d present the motion.
He said he was “really surprised” at its passage, and was clearly elated at the result.
No one spoke up to oppose it, including the prime minister, who was present in the Commons. MPs of all parties burst into cheers and applause when the motion passed.
“I think it’s a great symbol,” said Ste-Marie.
He said it presents a “good image at the international level to say, ‘No, if you are accomplice of a genocide you won’t have the honorary citizenship here. This is a nonsense.’ ”
Ste-Marie ’s success was all the more surprising as the BQ is no longer recognized as an official party in the Commons.
“We have to be inventive to participate in the debate,” he said.
Other MPs were pleased at the result as well.
Liberal caucus whip Mark Holland said he has held “many town halls where it’s been raised” as a concern.
“It’s a situation that’s followed very closely, maybe more so than people might realize.”
“I think that overall the message that’s being sent is that we’re deeply concerned about the plight of the Rohingya people and the situation that unfolded in (Burma) and on the border of Bangladesh, and that the Commons has chosen to make a statement to reflect its disapproval of how events have unfolded and the concern with the humanitarian crisis that was there.”
Liberal MP Gary Anandasangaree, parliamentary secretary for heritage, said there’s a “general consensus that Aung San Suu Kyi has never met her responsibility for what’s going on with the genocide of the Rohingya people.
“And I think this is a sign that citizenship that she received, the honorary citizenship, is not in line with what she’s done in that country,” Anandasangaree said.