Last week, LSE students voted to strip State Counsellor of Myanmar – Aung San Suu Kyi – of her title as Honourary President of the LSE Student’s Union. The move comes amid a chorus of international condemnation alleging that Suu Kyi has allowed an ethnic cleansing against the country’s muslim Rohingya minority population. On Thursday 9th November, during the weekly UGM, students debated the motion “Should LSESU remove Aung San Suu Kyi’s honorary presidency from the LSESU?”. Suu Kyi has held the title since 1991, when she won a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to bring democracy to the country.
The hour-long debate took place in front of over 90 attendees in the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre. The motion in favour of the sanction was proposed by Mahatir Pasha, General Secretary of the SU. The crowd was largely behind him, greeting the opposing speakers with polite applause while at times cheering for points made by Pasha and his seconder, Quratulain Ahsan. Voting was done via the LSESU website and polling closed at 5pm on Friday.
By stripping Suu Kyi of her Honorary Presidency, LSESU has made a statement regarding its opposition to her current position and inaction in the face of what has been labelled a genocide by some world leaders. It also aims to send a message to other institutions that have bestowed honours upon Suu Kyi. “Students are agents of political change and we have a lot of influence, we have a lot of power, and when we bring our heads together we can actually make change, and this is our opportunity to make that change, and make that stance,” Mahatir Pasha told The Beaver, explaining why he decided to present the motion.
Last September, the United Nations described the Rohingya crisis as a “texbook ethnic cleansing.” Suu Kyi’s government has allegedly instigated the violence and Suu Kyi herself has been accused of not only keeping silent on the reported massacres, but also of defending the military’s violence against the minority group. There are roughly 1.1 million Rohingya people in Rakhine state, around 500,000 of whom have fled to Bangladesh to escape the violence.
On Thursday, the opposition – led by Fatihahtul Hanan Binti Mohammad Nor and seconded by Suah Jing Lian – argued that the campaign held by the SU is based on false accounts. The opposition speakers argued that although it is true that Suu Kyi is not pressing for human rights as much as she used to, she has nonetheless spoken out about the Rohingya crisis, acknowledging its existence and urgency. Moreover, they claimed that Suu Kyi is powerless to stop the violence and that her intervention in the issue would give the military an excuse to resume martial law, arguing that the army currently has de facto control of the state.
A pamphlet circulating at the event summarized the main arguments of the proposition, noting that Suu Kyi holds 80 percent of seats in Myanmar’s parliament and could therefore “restrain the atrocities” if she chose to by repealing repressive laws, releasing political prisoners and by speaking out strongly against them. The opposition rebutted that the military holds “the important” seats.
The UGM was visited by a journalist from Al Jazeera English, who told The Beaver that since LSE is an internationally recognized educational institute, “the fact that the Student’s Union is taking this motion is representative…of a lot of international reactions to what is happening with Aung San Suu Kyi and the Rohingya”.
The Union’s decision to strip Suu Kyi of her honours echoes the motions presented by councils in various UK cities, including Sheffield, Oxford and Glasgow.
