Foreign

Nobel Prize Winner Aung San looses cool: “No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim”

March 25, 2016

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Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi lost her composure during BBC interview and was heard to mutter angrily off-air: ‘No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim’.

According to Daily Mail, BBC presenter Mishal Husain gave Suu Kyi, who remained under house arrest for 15 years in her native Burma, a rough ride during an interview and the spat between the two prominent and famously elegant Asian women has only just emerged when she was repeatedly asked by Husain to condemn anti-Islamic sentiment and the wave of mob-led massacres of Muslims in Myanmar, she declined to do so. ‘I think there are many, many Buddhists who have also left the country for various reasons,’ she replied. ‘This is a result of our sufferings under a dictatorial regime.’

Muslims are only 4 per cent of Burma’s population. The Rohingya Muslims, who have borne the brunt of the violence, are a smaller minority still. The Rohingya are explicitly forbidden from becoming citizens of Burma and have no political weight whatsoever.

Much of the country’s huge Buddhist majority dislikes its small Muslim community with a passion, so it is thought Suu Kyi did not want to alienate her supporters.