Campbell slams Derry doctorate holder Aung San Suu Kyi for silence over ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in Myanmar

The callscomes eight years after the Burmese democracy campaigner received a doctorate from Ulster University for her championship of human rights.

But the East Derry MP has critcised Ms. Suu Kyi’s silence over the ongoing persecution of the Rohingya. It’s been estimated over 582,000 of the Muslim minority have fled the majority Buddhist Rakhine province for Bangladesh since August. According to the UN “brutal, well-organized, coordinated and systematic attacks have been carried out against the minority Muslim Rohingya community in Myanmar, with the intention of not just driving them away but also preventing their return”.

Back in 2009 Ms. Suu Kyi, still in jail at the time, received, in absentia, a doctorate for her human rights work in the Millennium Forum. Now she’s being criticised for failing to defend the Rohingya in her role as State Counsellor, a powerful ministerial role in Myanmar.

“What pressure can be applied to the authorities in the region and particularly to the office of Aung San Suu Kyi - tributes have been paid to her in the past for her work to bring people together - to try to bring an end to the onslaught and murder that continue in the region?” asked Mr. Campbell.

British Secretary of State for International Development, Priti Patel, said: “She has a voice, and she needs to use it to stop the persecution and, with the Burmese military and with what is effectively her Government, to create routes home for the Rohingya people, giving them security, rather than the fleeing and persecution we have seen. It is not just for the British Government, although we are doing this, but for all international voices to step up, come together and make that abundantly clear to her.”