Manama: Former Bahraini lawmaker Ebtisam Hejres has called for revoking the Nobel Prize from Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, for failing to stand up against the persecution of Arakan Muslims (Rohingya) there.

“We all supported San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Prize laureate, when she had to spend 15 years under house arrest and the ruling junta abused her rights,” Hejres, who is the Secretary General of the Kingdom of Arakan Organisation, said. “However, after her party won the elections, she did absolutely nothing to help put an end to the plight of Rohingya. I therefore call for revocation of her Nobel Prize because she did not really deserve it and she is a source of shame for the efforts for peace,” Hejres said in a statement.

The Kingdom of Arakan organisation, established in November 2015 and approved by the UN’s Human Rights Council in December, aims to assist the Rohingya cause.

“The massacre and displacement of the Rohingya is largely due to the international negligence and silence towards their cause that has given the army the green light to carry out the atrocious onslaught on them,” she said.

“This issue will not be solved on its own and the international community has to step in forcefully to end the massacres sponsored by the government that provides political, military and media coverage for the murders.”

When more than 3,000 people are killed and around 60,000 are forced to flee their homes without food or water on treacherous journeys to squalid refugee camps in other countries, the international community cannot lapse into silence and become an accomplice to the perpetrators of the plight, she added.

“The silence and ineffectiveness of non-governmental organisations and associations during such crises and situations is a disgrace that must be addressed because crimes are on the rise and efforts must be consolidated among NGOs to complement one another. They must complement their efforts and exert pressure on the Myanmar government to stop the bloodshed and displacement of the Rohingya,” Hejres, who was elected lawmaker in 2011 and served until 2014, said.

Kuwaiti professor and political analyst Abdullah Al Shayji renewed a call he issued last year for the revocation of the Nobel Prize to San Suu Kyi over her complicit silence regarding the massacre of Rohingya Muslims.

In a series of tweets, he recalled how in March 2016, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, considered in the West as “a beacon of saintly integrity” in fact showed her “hypocrite and racist” side when during an interview with BBC Today presenter Mishal Husain, she muttered angrily “No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim.”