Geldof: I did not want to be linked with ‘pig’ Suu Kyi
BOB Geldof has said he didn’t want to be associated with a ‘pig’ when he chose to hand back his Freedom of Dublin award, in protest at Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi having the same accolade.
The singer and activist sparked controversy last year when he wrote to the City Council insisting he did not want the honour if it was also bestowed on her.
Suu Kyi was given Freedom of Dublin City in 1999 while she was leading the opposition campaign against the military dictatorship in Burma. However, since effectively coming to power in recent years, she has been
‘Handmaiden to ethnic cleansing’
criticised for failing to condemn an army crackdown that has seen thousands of minority Rohingya Muslims murdered and many more raped.
Dublin city councillors voted in December to take the honour off Suu Kyi. However, it also agreed to rescind Mr Geldof’s award – which he had already handed back – a decision that he said left him ‘absolutely disgusted’.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Late Late Show last night, Mr Geldof said he had found handing back the award difficult. He said: ‘I didn’t want to, it’s a lovely thing... It was on my wall. I took it off and undid the frame and rolled it up and thought, “Jaysus, we’ll do it anyway.”
‘I just said it is a gesture. I know it is embarrassing and it is small, but I don’t want to be part of this. Everyone resorts to the Nazis but if Hitler was on our roll of honour he’d have been long gone, there is no question of it.’
Mr Geldof told Ryan Tubridy that Ireland had welcomed Suu Kyi, but it turned out she was an ‘accomplice to rape’ and a ‘handmaiden to ethnic cleansing’.
He said: ‘Burning people alive, raping women as they held their babies and in front of the women when they finished raping them, they burned the babies alive. That’s a fact and it is on film. I don’t want to be associated with this pig once.’