{"id":122379,"date":"2018-11-19T13:08:38","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T13:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=122379"},"modified":"2018-11-26T11:28:51","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T11:28:51","slug":"amnesty-strips-aung-san-suu-kyi-of-its-highest-honor-obamas-nobel-peace-prize-should-be-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/11\/amnesty-strips-aung-san-suu-kyi-of-its-highest-honor-obamas-nobel-peace-prize-should-be-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Amnesty Strips Aung San Suu Kyi of Its Highest Honor; Obama\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize Should Be Next"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>16 Nov 2018 – <\/em>Amnesty International announced it would strip Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of its top award, saying it was \u201cprofoundly dismayed\u201d at her failure to acknowledge the full scale of atrocities against the Rohingya people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before you are tempted to view this as some kind of principled, honorable move on Amnesty\u2019s part, stop yourself and check out its dubious<\/a> government and corporate funding sources, its selective support<\/a> for the concept of free speech and the fact that it spends quite a bit of time soft-pedaling Western imperialism and its atrocities while magnifying the wrongdoings of the West\u2019s adversaries.<\/p>\n

Amnesty\u2019s attempt to win plaudits for its decision to revoke Suu Kyi\u2019s award has come after mounting calls for the controversial figure\u2019s 1991 Nobel Peace Prize to be stripped from her. Nearly half a million people have signed a Change.org petition<\/a> calling for the Nobel Committee to take back the award.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty are declining to back a measure to end US support for the war in Yemen. But HRW director @KenRoth<\/a> cheered on NATO\u2019s war on Libya & pushes for war on Syria. @AmnestyUK<\/a> even held a rally for a NFZ on Syria. https:\/\/t.co\/ho1AD0jp56<\/a> via @sarahlazare<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 8, 2018<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given that the committee has been, shall we say, less than picky, about who it bestows the honor on, we can probably assume Suu Kyi will remain on the recipients list. Not to mention, the committee has already confirmed that worrying about what recipients do after the award ceremony isn\u2019t part of the job<\/a>. You see, the rules regulating the Nobel Prize, apparently, do not allow for the award to be withdrawn, which is fairly convenient.<\/p>\n

I say convenient, because if they started taking Nobel Prizes back from all the people who (oops!) didn\u2019t actually deserve them, the list of remaining recipients would shrink very quickly indeed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u00a9 AFP \/ Jim Watson \u00a9 AFP<\/p><\/div>\n

The first unworthy awardee that springs to mind is, of course, former US President Barack Obama, who, rather inexplicably, was presented with his Nobel Peace Prize a mere nine months into his first term as president on the basis that it seemed like he might do something worthy of the honor at some point in the future. Sadly for the Nobel Committee, which clearly had high hopes for the man, Obama went on to bomb<\/a> seven different countries over the course of his two terms.<\/p>\n

Read more: Most controversial Nobel Peace Prize winners of all time <\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How interesting, by the way, that the committee rules won\u2019t provide for an undeserved award to be taken back, but they have no problem giving an award to someone for things they haven\u2019t even done yet.<\/p>\n

Asked in 2016 by comedian Stephen Colbert why he received the prize, Obama said \u201cTo be honest, I still don\u2019t know\u201d<\/em> \u2014 so at least even he seems to know the whole thing is a bit of a joke.<\/p>\n

The farcical nature of the so-called prestigious prize was compounded again in 2012 when it was award to\u2026 the European Union.<\/p>\n

But well before any of that, in 1973, we had infamous war criminal Henry Kissinger who somehow managed to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to negotiate a ceasefire during the Vietnam War, while at the same time he was secretly orchestrating the devastating carpet-bombing of Cambodia. Kissinger\u2019s peace prize was a decision which satirist and songwriter Tom Lehrer said \u201cmade political satire obsolete.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the Nobel Committee was, however, in the business of taking back awards, it\u2019s easy to imagine that Suu Kyi\u2019s might be one of the first to go. Come on, it would be fine to take back an utterly insignificant and meaningless award from Myanmar\u2019s out-of-fashion leader, but highlighting Western hypocrisies or crimes by swiping an award from Obama? Let\u2019s not get ahead of ourselves!<\/p>\n

Now, not to be too much of a stickler here, but since we\u2019re engaging in wishful thinking, I\u2019d also like to suggest that the committee take back Malala Yousafzai\u2019s award. There is no doubt that Malala\u2019s activism on behalf of girls\u2019 education, before and after her near-fatal 2012 shooting by the Taliban, is admirable.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: UN\u2019s \u2018genocide\u2019 report not good enough for Nobel Committee to strip Myanmar\u2019s Suu Kyi of peace prize<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, awarded at 16 years old, Malala had become a poster child, a pawn and propaganda tool of the West. While she was being showered with praise and concern in the West \u2014 which was portraying itself as a savior to the poor unfortunate Pakistanis \u2014 the Obama administration was ramping up its drone bombing of that country, killing plenty of children who weren\u2019t so lucky as Malala. Death by American drone is obviously a far superior and more justifiable way to go than meeting a Taliban bullet.<\/p>\n

Anyway, maybe the Suu Kyi case could serve as a reminder going forward that very often, international awards bestowed on flavor-of-the-month political leaders and activists are actually an utter farce \u2014 and that perhaps we should do away with them or at least stop paying so much attention to the whole charade.<\/p>\n

Oh, and Bob Dylan\u2019s Nobel Prize for Literature? That\u2019s definitely got to go.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Her work has appeared in<\/em> Salon, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, teleSUR, RBTH, The Calvert Journal and others.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 rt.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 Nov 2018 – Amnesty International announced it would strip Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of its top award, saying it was \u201cprofoundly dismayed\u201d at her failure to acknowledge the full scale of atrocities against the Rohingya people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":51021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,224,48,65,56,677],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nobel-laureates","category-human-rights","category-in-focus","category-anglo-america","category-asia-pacific","category-asia-updates-on-myanmar-rohingya-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}