Liam Collins on why Bob Geldof is right to hand back scroll –

HE may very well be a loud-mouth but Bob Geldof has the knack of putting vital issues centre stage, whether it was famine in Africa or the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar (formerly Burma).

Describing her as “a handmaiden to genocide”, Geldof has perfectly caught the contradiction at the heart of the one-time opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Chief Counsellor (nominally Prime Minister) of Myanmar, who was conferred with the Freedom of Dublin on November 1, 1999, along with her friends and supporters in Irish rock band U2.

She is now standing firmly on the sideline as the country’s army engages in the ethnic cleansing of its minority Muslims, with some 600,000 poor and harassed Rohingya fleeing their own country to make-shift refugee camps in Bangladesh, with tales of murder, rape and the systematic burning of their villages.

Yesterday Geldof, the former Blackrock College boy who was conferred with the Freedom of Dublin in 2006 as well as being honoured with a British knighthood by Queen Elizabeth, handed back his Dublin accolade in one of those dramatic moments that have characterised his career since he was the young lead singer with Dublin band The Boomtown Rats.

Geldof did not cast aspersions on the award itself, saying that he was a “proud Dubliner” and would gladly take it back if the leader of Myanmar was struck from the Roll of Honour, which was introduced by the City Council in 1876 and includes Charles Stewart Parnell, John Redmond, Hugh Lane, John McCormack, Maureen Potter and Mother Theresa of Calcutta, among others.

Although dismissed as a “showbiz gesture” by Leonard Doyle of the International Organisation for Migration, it was surely more than that. It not only drew attention to events in far-off Myanmar, but it also brought out the predictable smallminded response from the city’s current Lord Mayor, Mícheál Mac Donncha, a member of Sinn Féin. Instead of seizing the opportunity to join Geldof in drawing attention to the tragedy happening in real time, he chose to engage in ‘whataboutery’

– the usual nonsense that characterises the mind-set of so many Republicans.

Mac Donncha couldn’t resist delving into the dark past to question the morality of Geldof’s British honour, saying it was “ironic that he makes this gesture while proudly retaining his title as Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, given the shameful record of British imperialism across the globe”. But this is not about the past, so beloved of Sinn Féin commentators; it is about mass human rights violations happening right now. Mac Donncha and the City Council could have seized the initiative themselves and stripped Suu Kyi (left) of the honour, instead of allowing Geldof to champion public opinion on the issue. I first heard of the Rohingya at least five years ago from a documentary filmmaker who returned from Burma disgusted with what happening and the response of the Buddhist majority, who are cheerleaders for the military genocide. It really came to public notice earlier this year only when a torrent of refugees began to pour across the border into neighbouring Bangladesh fleeing the scorched-earth policy of the powerful Myanmar military, fighting rebels in Rakhine state.

SUU Kyi, who trots out platitudes like “it is not power that corrupts, but fear” has been sitting on the sidelines since she went from house arrest as a dissident opposition leader to the country’s prime minister, refusing to use her power, temporal or moral, to rein in the terror.

Geldof is right when he says: “Her association with our city shames us all and we should have no truck with it, even by default ... we honoured her, now she appals us.”

In what appears a choreographed move, Bono and U2 – who were advocates of Suu Kyi, and instrumental in having her conferred with the Freedom of Dublin on the same day as themselves, also moved to distance themselves from the events that have brought shame on her once exalted position as an international figure for justice.

“What has happened this year, and in particular these past months – this we never imagined,” said a statement issued at the weekend jointly by Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr. “Who could have predicted that if more than 600,000 people were fleeing from a brutal army for fear of their lives, the woman who many of us believed would have the clearest and loudest voice on the crisis would go quiet. For these atrocities against the Rohingya people to be happening on her watch blows our minds and breaks our hearts.”

They do believe, however, that while she is the nominal leader of Myanmar, she has no control over the army and say that she has at last made a visit to a Rakhine state, meeting some of the remaining Rohingya villagers.

Geldof, who admits to making “things up as I go along”, knows that the mechanism for removing the Freedom of Dublin has never occurred before, but “if you give me a felt-tip pen I’ll show you how to remove her from the city scroll ... I’ll scratch her name out”.

This issue is about calling people to account and drawing attention to the silence of the fallen hero Aung San Suu Kyi.

In doing so, Geldof has done his city some service and our Lord Mayor should have risen to the occasion by supporting his stance, instead of reflecting the petty political prejudices of his party.

Lord Mayor Mícheál Mac Donncha chose to engage in ‘whataboutery’ ... but this is not about the past, so beloved of Sinn Féin commentators; it is about mass human rights violations happening right now