University’s chance to show empty chair again

AFTER spending a very pleasant evening with a Burmese patriot in Rangoon and listening to his account of life under British imperialism and subsequently, during World War II, under the harshly oppressive rule of the Japanese, it has been disappointing to learn of the further suppression of freedom in post-colonial Burma.

During the early 1990s an attempt was made to persuade the authorities at Queen’s University in Belfast to award an honorary degree in absentia to the popular leader Aung San Sui Kyi as a means of promoting her pro-democracy profile in this part of the world.

Had the media been invited to highlight her empty seat on the platform of the Whitla Hall on the appropriate graduation day, such a powerful symbol of her plight in Burma could have gone out to the world.

After what we have seen on our TV screens in recent weeks, and after learning of the atrocities still being carried out by the security forces in Burma, has the time not come for Queen’s to reconsider its position and to offer this brave and determined woman the degree they might have conferred on her all those years ago.

John Robb

59 Hopefield Ave

Portrush

Co Antrim