Now Suu Kyi’s name removed from Oxford college common room

Undergraduates at the Oxford college where Aung San Suu Kyi studied have voted to remove the leader of Myanmar’s name from the title of their junior common room.

The students at St Hugh’s college took the decision over Myanmar's de facto leader Suu Kyi’s response to the Rohingya crisis, according to a report published in The Guardian.

In a vote on Thursday evening, students at St Hugh’s college at the University of Oxford resolved to eliminate the name of the 1991 Nobel peace laureate from the Aung San Suu Kyi junior common room with immediate effect, says the report.

The motion criticised the “silence and complicity” in her apparent defence of the country’s treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority, who have suffered ethnic cleansing and violent attacks by Myanmar’s military forces.

The communal violence has torn through the Rakhine state of Myanmar since Muslim minority Rohingya militants staged deadly attacks on police posts on August 25.

An army-led fightback has left scores dead and sent more than half a million Rohingya fleeing the mainly Buddhist country into neighbouring Bangladesh.

The United Nations describes the situation as "ethnic cleansing".

Earlier in last month, the same Oxford University college had taken down a portrait of the Myanmar leader, a decision that followed widespread criticism of her over the Rohingya crisis.

The portrait, which was on display in the main entrance of St Hugh's College, has been placed in storage and was replaced on September 28 with a new painting gifted by Japanese artist Yoshihiro Takada.

However, the university did not say whether the removal was linked to the ongoing crisis in Myanmar's western Rakhine State.

Source: thedailystar