UK Oxford Council Strips Myanmar De Facto Leader of Freedom of City

The council of the UK city of Oxford has unanimously supported a decision to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of Freedom of the City at a special meeting.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The council of the UK city of Oxford stripped Myanmar de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi of Freedom of the City due to her failure to provide effective response to the continuing Rohingya crisis, the council said in a statement.

"Today we have taken the unprecedented step of stripping her [Aung San Suu Kyi] of the city's highest honor because of her inaction in the face of oppression of the minority Rohingya population," the statement by Councillor Mary Clarkson, published on the City Council's official Twitter account, read.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who is also the winner of a Nobel Prize, was granted freedom of the city in 1997 for "reflecting Oxford's values of tolerance and internationalism," according to the statement.

The motion was unanimously supported at a special Council meeting on Monday.

Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have been fleeing to Bangladesh to avoid waves of violence following the government's deployment of police and military units in response to an August 25 attack by Rohingya insurgents on security posts in the country's Rakhine state.

In September, in her first address to the nation since the eruption of the crisis, Aung San Suu Kyi condemned violence in Rakhine, calling on the global community for help in settling it.