Senator says Suu Kyi images at human rights museum should stay

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This article was published 27/11/2017 (2882 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A Manitoba senator who’s an expert in human rights says the Canadian Museum for Human Rights should resist calls to remove images of Aung San Suu Kyi from its displays because of the ongoing massacre of members of a minority group in her country.

Instead, Marilou McPhedran says the museum should teach visitors about the persecution of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. They are being subjected to “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” as explained by a United Nations human rights official. Suu Kyi is the de facto leader of the Myanmar government.

She was lauded for her decades of peaceful activism and for seeking democracy in Myanmar (also known as Burma) at a heavy personal cost. She is among six Nobel Peace Prize winners who have been awarded honorary Canadian citizenship. Various groups have asked for both honours to be rescinded because of the slayings of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in the Buddist-majority country.

Suu Kyi has come under heavy criticism for ignoring and dismissing claims of systematic, military-led killings of Rohingya for several months.

In an interview last week, McPhedran said the museum should use the scrutiny to better educate Canadians.

“I don’t like erasing history. Add to it.”

Human rights groups have reported on the military, which is mostly Buddhist, razing Rohingya villages and killing people. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi has repeatedly dismissed that as “misinformation” that ignores armed rebel groups among the Rohingya.

Suu Kyi’s image is prominently displayed on the fourth floor of the museum, in the Turning Points for Humanity pavilion between Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai. Activists in Winnipeg and other cities have asked the museum to remove her story from its displays.

As a former human rights lawyer, McPhedran said the museum should pull from the media reports and drone footage of the refugee exodus, to explain the persecution of the Rohingya.

“I don’t think it’s a question of obliterating information; I think it’s a question of adding to it and letting people gather the information and draw their own conclusions.”

Last week, the museum said it wouldn’t remove the picture of Suu Kyi, but would use it as a chance to discuss the crisis in Myanmar, although a museum spokeswoman didn’t elaborate.

McPhedran was in Bangladesh earlier this month at a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meeting.

Before travelling, she had arranged to visit the country’s border with Myanmar, where more than 600,000 refugees have arrived in just three months.

Despite a British delegation of parliamentarians visiting the area, McPhedran said Canada’s high commissioner to Bangladesh denied her permission to visit, which was required by the UN.

McPhedran believes this is because the Liberals’ special envoy, Bob Rae, was visiting at the time, or possibly due to a change in the leadership at the Canadian Embassy.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca