Disgraced leader an honorary citizen Canada doesn’t need

There is precious little Canada can do to stop the brutal persecution of Myanmar’s long-suffering Rohingya minority.

We cannot force Myanmar’s military rulers to welcome back the 720,000 Rohingya they drove out over the past year and who now live in squalid refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

We cannot compel Myanmar to rebuild all the Rohingya villages, including an estimated 35,000 homes, that its soldiers burned to ashes, nor can we drag the military leaders responsible for these and other atrocities before the International Criminal Court to face justice. Nor, saddest of all, can we turn back the clock and save the lives of the more than 10,000 Rohingya butchered by the Myanmar military in what Canadian MPs last week unanimously and rightfully declared is a genocide.

But Canada can do and did do something that goes beyond expressing words of outrage and condemnation.

Last week, our Parliament voted to revoke the honorary citizenship it granted Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in 2007. She is no longer worthy of being called “Canadian” in any way. Aung San Suu Kyi received this signal recognition in far different times, when she seemed a very different person and before she shamefully defended Myanmar’s brutal treatment of the Rohingya. When Canadian MPs made her an honorary citizen, Aung San Suu Kyi was universally revered in the West as a champion of liberty, democracy and human rights.

She courageously stood up to Myanmar’s tyrannical military rulers. And she suffered for it. For 12 of the 18 years before being honoured by Canada, Aung San Suu Kyi had been either in prison or under house arrest. Although her pro-democracy party won Myanmar’s election in 1990, the military junta would not surrender power. The next year, she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Only in 2012 was Aung San Suu Kyi finally set free. By that time. and in the face of crippling sanctions, Myanmar’s military government appeared willing to accept liberal reforms that included acknowledging her as the leader of the country’s civilian government.

Although the military junta has remained in charge, Aung San Suu Kyi has considerable power, which she has surely abused. Her persistent denial that the Rohingya, a Muslim-minority community in a country with a Buddhist majority, have been targeted and massacred is disgraceful.

Her sins are of commission as well as omission. She has defended the imprisonment of journalists trying to bear witness to the atrocities. In a new report, United Nations investigators harshly criticized her for not using her authority to defend the Rohingya people. When an entire group was attacked, she turned away.

To be made an honorary Canadian citizen is the highest honour this country can bestow upon a foreign national. In granting this distinction to Aung San Suu Kyi, Canadian MPs essentially said she was one of us, that she shared our highest ideals, including the belief that every human possesses and should be protected by inviolable rights.

Now her façade of liberality has been stripped away to reveal the ugly face of a hypocritical enabler. Aung San Suu Kyi the hero has become a zero.

What Parliament did is more than a symbolic act. It extends moral support to the Rohingya people, some of whom have already expressed gratitude to Canada for denouncing Myanmar’s genocide. It is a very public way to hold Aung San Suu Kyi accountable for her wrongdoing. And it shows the world that our good Canadian name should not be tarnished through association with the likes of her.