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| Edited By: Surabhi Pandey |Source: DNA webdesk |Updated: Sep 08, 2017, 04:15 PM IST
Genocide, mass killing, ethnic cleansing, persecution....these words don't sit well when you talk about a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
But the brutal fact is that today, the world is talking about genocide and a Nobel Peace Prize winner in same breath.
Anyone who has even the slightest clue about international affairs would distinctly remember Aung San Suu Kyi's struggle in Myanmar.
The beautiful, petite leader from erstwhile Burma with flower in her hair and steely resolve in her voice fought for democracy.
Many like me had Che Guevara-inspired Suu Kyi T-shirts with 'Free Burma' slogans.
The world loved her, the military dictatorship resented her. She spent 15 years of her life in house arrest and yet when she won Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for democracy in 1991, we all felt that an icon was born.
After her release from house arrest in 2010, when she won elections in 2015, it was believed Burma would regain its lost glory.
Cut to 2017, Rohingya Muslims, a million-strong ethnic minority is being persecuted in Suu Kyi's Myanmar. Thousands have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh within a week.
The grotesque treatment of Rohingya Muslims has been identified by the United Nations as the worst in recent times faced by any group, anywhere in the world.
The Rohingya Muslims, whose origins date back to 8th century's Arakan or present-day Rakhine, are stateless and unwanted in Myanmar.
Ever since the British Raj, they are being viewed as outsiders, illegal intruders who have no citizen status in Myanmar.
The Burmese army has given a free hand to slaughter the Rohingya Muslims.
Thousands have been raped, butchered and children snatched away from their mothers and tossed in rivers.
And this is just a tip of the iceberg. Though Suu Kyi and her government has repeatedly called all this 'misinformation' and 'fake news', question remains - What's happening in Myanmar?.
How a Nobel Peace Prize winner can remain silent and tow the line of the very same military against whom she fought all her life? How can the prejudices of past be reason for mass killing of today?
Why shouldn’t Aung San Suu Kyi return her Nobel Peace Prize? Why must the world remain silent and think it as Burma's internal matter?
India has stood by Suu Kyi despite growing international pressure. But for how long? Its a humanitarian crisis and ironically the person in question is not some Idi Amin or Khmer Rouge regime.
Dear Aung San Suu Kyi, we loved you, it's for this very love and respect that I urge you to save Rohingya Muslims...because if this becomes another Armenian genocide than history won't forgive you.
And if you want to remain this indifferent to this crisis, do one thing – Give up your Nobel Peace Prize.
