Claiming that Aung San Suu Kyi has chosen to turn a blind eye to the genocide taking place in her country to retain her political power, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Iran’s Shirin Ebadi said on Thursday that their fellow laureate has sold her soul to the devil.
The laureate came up with this remark at a programme titled ‘Combating Violence Against Women and Advancing Women’s Rights’ arranged by Naripokkho and Nobel Women’s Initiatives in the city where she and another Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Northern Ireland’s Mairead Maguire talked to female reporters of the country.
“When Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest, Mairead and I staged several campaigns in order to secure her release, we even staged demonstration outside the Myanmar Embassy in Washingtong,” she said adding, “However, unfortunately, when she was released from the house arrest she sold her soul to the devil.”
Shirin said she, as a Muslim laureate, has written several open letters to Suu Kyi saying that her silence is shameful. “I urged her to take a stance breaking her silence, but Suu Kyi didn’t reply to any of them.”
Suu Kyi appears to have forgotten how she suffered when she was under house arrest. Now the Rohingya Muslims are suffering at least ten times more than any of her sufferings but she wants to hold on her political power, she added.
Urging for a peaceful solution,Mairead Maguiresaid dialogue and diplomacy are very important to solve the Rohingya crisis and the role played by Bangladesh is a model for the world. She and the two other laureates will hopefully further detect the genocide of Rohingya people to the ICC and encourage the other countries to support Bangladesh for their inspirational works in the crisis, added the laureate. She said it is also important to focus on the need of having dialogue and listening to each other to bring peace, while everybody, including the governments, has a role to play here.
Claiming that they have the evidence that the Rohingya issue is genocide, Mairead said their next course of programme is to identify interested states through the UN who can take the Myanmar government to the ICC. “We want to find states that have passion for human rights and justice,” she added.
However, the three Nobel laureates-Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, Shirin Ebadi of Iran and Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland-came to Bangladesh on a week-long visit to see the Rohingya situation on the ground. The Nobel Women’s Initiative in collaboration with its partner in Bangladesh, Naripokkho, led the delegation to Bangladesh to better understand the situation of the Rohingya refugees and the two laureates except Tawakkol Karman joined the programme to share their experiences with some of the female journalists of the country.
