The Myanmar leader should be cut from Good
Night Stories for Rebel Girls, critics insist
By
Jane Merrick
 |
|
Aung San Suu Kyi’s lack
of response to the plight of the Rohingya Muslims has led
to calls for her to be
edited from a book of inspirational women.
Photograph: Lynn Bo
Bo/EPA
|
It is one of the most popular children’s
books of 2017, a collection of stories about female role models from Amelia
Earhart and Marie Curie to Hillary Clinton and Serena Williams, inspiring girls
to aim high and challenge the status quo.
But Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls,
likely to be in many Christmas stockings, has run into controversy because of
one of the 100 women included in its pages. When the book was written last
year, Aung San Suu Kyi was deemed a worthy subject: winner of the Nobel peace
prize and epitome of courage in the face of oppression. But her fall from grace
over her response to violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, described by
the UN as possible genocide, has triggered calls for her to be taken out of
future editions. In response, the authors, Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo,
are considering removing her from reprints.
Angry
parents insist Suu Kyi is not suitable for the book.
Angry
parents insist Suu Kyi is not suitable for the book. Photograph: no credit
The book, aimed at children aged six and
over, devotes two pages to each of its role models, including commissioned
illustrations by female artists. It quotes Aung San Suu Kyi as saying: “Since
we live in this world, we have to do our best for this world.” It charts her
story from her protests against the junta through 21 years of house arrest to
her release and leadership: “She won the Nobel peace prize, and inspired
millions of people in her own country and across the world, all without leaving
her house.”
On the book’s Facebook page, Lenka Uzakova
wrote: “As much as 99 per cent of book is inspiring, I found it absolutely
disgusting that you have included someone suspected of genocide in the book.
Aung San Suu Kyi has no place between those women. Someone who does nothing and
perhaps is directly involved in massacres, rapes, burning of kids alive … I am
speechless she is in the book.”
Another parent, Gerri Peev, said: “I bought
this book for my three-year-old daughter as an antidote to the tyranny of ‘pink
princess publishing’. It is filled with inspiring female role models who don’t
rely on a prince to sort their lives out. I was dismayed to see this page
effectively canonising Aung San Suu Kyi. I hope the publishers issue another
edition, updating her fall from grace over the Rohingya massacre.”
Labour MP and shadow justice minister Yasmin
Qureshi, who has raised concerns in parliament about the Rohingya crisis, said:
“I often wonder how it can be possible to go from being one of the most admired
and respected civil rights champions, a symbol of courage, patience and
principle, to someone who shows such lack of compassion.
“I have no doubt that history will remember
her as the leader who watched on while mass killing, systematic rape and ethnic
cleansing of hundreds of thousands who were forced to live in squalid refugee
camps. I’d encourage the authors to consider that there is an entire generation
of young Rohingya children who are stateless and hopeless, suffering a
miserable existence. Aung San Suu Kyi’s refusal to condemn makes her
complicit.”
In a statement the authors said: “We’re monitoring
the situation closely and we don’t exclude the idea of removing her from future
reprints.”
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls was first
published in the US and is described as the “most-funded original book in the
history of crowdfunding”. It is published in the UK by Particular Books, part
of Penguin Random House. Last week Blackwell’s named it as its book of the
year, beating among others Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
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Aung San Suu Kyi, who has won more than 120
international honours, including the Nobel prize, was last week stripped of her
Freedom of the City of Dublin award and earlier lost her Freedom of Oxford
accolade. The Dublin decision came after musician and activist Bob Geldof
returned his own Freedom of the City in protest. St Hugh’s College Oxford,
where Aung San Suu Kyi studied, has taken down her portrait.
It is estimated that 650,000 Rohingya Muslims
have been forced to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh since the crackdown by
Myanmar’s security forces began. Last week the aid charity Médecins Sans
Frontières reported that at least 6,700 Rohingya, including hundreds of
children, were killed in the first month of the crackdown.
Criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi’s response
intensified last week when it emerged that two Reuters journalists have been
detained and face 14 years in jail for reporting on the crisis.
