A veteran lawyer defending the rights of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority received at the weekend an international humanitarian award created in memory of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
Kyaw Hla Aung was declared the winner of the 2018 Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity at a pre-dawn ceremony held near an ancient Armenian monastery, against the backdrop of Mount Ararat located just across Armenia’s border with Turkey. He received the prize carrying a $100,000 personal grant during another solemn event held in Yerevan on Sunday evening.
“The support of the Aurora Prize serves as important recognition for all of the Muslim victims of human rights violations,” he said.
The annual award was established in 2015 by three prominent Diaspora Armenians: philanthropists Ruben Vardanyan and Noubar Afeyan, and Vartan Gregorian, the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is designed to honor individuals around the world who risk their lives to help others.
The prize is named after Aurora Mardiganian, an Armenian genocide survivor who witnessed the massacre of relatives and told her story in a book and film.
Kyaw Hla Aung was selected by an international committee from among 750 nominations submitted from 115 countries. The selection committee comprises dignitaries such as Mexico’s former President Ernesto Zedillo, former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.
Kyaw Hla Aung has for decades been trying to protect the Rohingya community against discrimination and grave human rights abuses committed by Myanmar authorities. He has spent a total of 12 years in prison as a result of his efforts.
Kyaw Hla Aung is based in Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine state where more than one million Rohingya lived until a year ago. Myanmar’s armed forces launched last summer a brutal crackdown on them in response to armed attacks by Rohingya insurgents.
Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since August, creating one of the world’s largest refugee camps. The refugees have reported systematic killings, burnings, looting and rape committed by security forces.
The United Nations and the United States have described the crackdown as ethnic cleansing - an accusation which Myanmar denies.
“Kyaw Hla Aung’s work personifies the spirit of the Aurora Prize,” said Mary Robinson, a former UN high commissioner for human rights and another member of the selection committee.
Power, for her part, lamented what she called the international community’s inadequate response to the Rohingya refugee crisis. “An entire people has been systematically murdered, raped and deported from their country, and no contact group has been formed,” the former U.S. envoy said in Yerevan.
Vardanyan, who is an Armenian-born Russian businessman, drew parallels between the plight of Rohingya Muslims and Armenians deported and massacred by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. “I think there was something symbolic [about the choice of the 2018 prize winner,]” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “But it was really not our decision.”
Like the previous two Aurora Prize winners, Kyaw Hla Aung was also awarded an additional $1 million to donate to organizations that inspired his work. He chose three charities providing medical and other relief aid to Rohingya refugees.
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