LONDON: A portrait of Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has been removed by Oxford University, where she was previously awarded an honorary degree, amid criticism of her handling of the Rohingya crisis.
According to details, The Oxford college, where Aung San Suu Kyi studied as an undergraduate has removed her portrait from public display and placed it in storage, in a move that follows international criticism over her role in Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis.
Myanmar's de facto leader has been criticised for failing to address UN allegations of ethnic cleansing.
In a statement St Hugh’s said, “the college received the gift of a new painting earlier this month which will be exhibited for a period. The painting of Aung San Suu Kyi has, meanwhile, been moved to storage.”
Aung San Suu Kyi graduated from St Hugh's College in 1967. In 2012 she was celebrated with an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, and held her 67th birthday party at the college where she studied politics, philosophy and economics between 1964 and 1967.
Ms Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner who has been Myanmar's de facto civilian leader since winning elections in 2015, is coming under growing international pressure to act.
In a speech last week, the Nobel Prize winner condemned human rights abuses but did not blame the army or address allegations of ethnic cleansing.
But in recent months Myanmar’s leader has attracted increasing criticism for her apparent defence of the country’s treatment of its Rohingya minority, who have suffered ethnic cleansing and violent attacks by Myanmar’s military forces.
But the move by St Hugh’s was described as cowardly by the Burma Campaign UK group, which urged the college to go further.
As a leader of Myanmar’s opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi won a Nobel peace prize in 1991. Despite being barred from running for president, she won a decisive victory in the country’s 2015 election, and was eventually given a title of state counsellor.
The portrait, painted by the artist Chen Yanning in 1997, belonged to Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband, the Oxford academic Michael Aris. After Aris’s death in 1999 the portrait was bequeathed to St Hugh’s, and hung near the college’s main entrance on St Margaret’s Road in north Oxford.
The college’s other notable alumni include Theresa May, Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, and Barbara Castle, a cabinet minister in Harold Wilson’s Labour governments.
As prime minister, May has been under pressure to take action after evidence emerged that Myanmar’s military forces were driving hundreds of thousands of Rohingya out of the country.
Earlier this month May said: “Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese government need to make it very clear that the military action should stop.”
So far Oxford University has decided not to reconsider Aung San Suu Kyi’s honorary degree. But last week the university expressed its “profound concern” over the treatment of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority.
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