Parliament agreed unanimously last week to revoke the honorary Canadian citizenship of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, punishment for her alleged complicity in the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya.
The urge to do something – anything – about the bloodshed in the country’s Rakhine State is understandable.
More than 700,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee their homes since the government escalated its crackdown over a year ago. The army has been guilty of widespread sexual assault. Survivors report the murder of children. The exact death toll is unknown but it is certainly in the thousands.
As the duration of the violence suggests, however, there are no easy solutions. Sanctions have limited effect in a country that only recently opened itself to the world economy.
Meanwhile, the Buddhist majority is broadly hostile to Muslims, so public pressure is unlikely to end the crackdown.
That would be true even if Myanmar was a proper democracy, which it is not. Despite the country’s landmark 2015 elections that nominally brought Ms. Suu Kyi and her party to power, the military still holds a quarter of the seats in parliament and controls all the ministries related to security.
That has rendered the Nobel Peace Prize laureate powerless to stop the genocide. Critics are right to note her silence on the horrors taking place, along with her disturbingly equivocal comments from before the outbreak of violence about whether the Rohingya belong in Myanmar.
But in a country where appalling views about the Rohingya are common, and in which democratic forces are jockeying for power with the military, Ms. Suu Kyi faces a delicate balancing act.
Were she to speak out, she might fare better with the international community but squander some of her popular legitimacy – as well as threaten a backlash from the generals, who would be happy to rule as a junta again – all without saving a single life.
Maybe Ms. Suu Kyi doesn’t deserve to be an honorary Canadian citizen – it’s never been clear what the criteria are – but in stripping her of the honour, Parliament should not fool itself into thinking it is improving the situation in Myanmar.