Reuters seemed to answer the big question that might stay in our mind regarding the Nobel Peace Prize of Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi after all her ‘regrettable’ actions lately.
During an interview with Reuters on Friday (28/09), the head of Nobel foundation stated, Suu Kyi’s Nobel Prize will not be withdrawn.
Lars Heikensten, said it would be impossible to withdraw awards in response to actions that occurred after the prizes were given because the judges would constantly need to discuss the merits of laureates.
As has been frequently reported, investigators from the UN have released a report in August saying that military forces of Myanmar had done mass assassinations of Muslim Rohingya and claiming the action as “genocidal intent” in an operation that caused more than 700,000 refugees escaped to the border to Bangladesh.
“We see what she’s been doing in Myanmar has been questioned a lot and we stand for human rights, that’s one of our core values,” Lars Heikensten, the head of the Nobel Foundation, conveyed.
“So of course, to the extent that she’s responsible for that, that is very regrettable,” Heikensten continued.
Zaw Htay, the government spokesman refused to answer calls to give any comments on Monday (01/10), saying that any clarification to the media would only be provided during a biweekly conference.
“We don’t believe it would make sense to try to withdraw prizes ... it would involve us in constant discussions about the merits about what people are doing afterwards after they have received the prize,” Heikensten said.
“There has always been and there always will be Nobel laureates that are doing things after they’ve been awarded the prize which we do not approve of or which we don’t think are the right things. That we cannot avoid I think,” he stated.
The Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation observes the administration of all the Nobel Prizes, which are given by different organizations in both Sweden and Norway.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Peace Prize itself, said in August this year that, the rules did not stipulate any clauses to allow the awards to be repealed.