Aung San Suu Kyi will not be stripped of her Nobel Peace Prize: Award commitee

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not be stripped of her Nobel Peace Prize, the award's committee said Wednesday.

Suu Kyi was awarded the prestigious prize in 1991 when she was the leader of the opposition in the country.

Some people had demanded the stripping of the Myanmar state counsellor's award after the Rohingya crisis surfaced in 2017.

In her first public statement over three weeks after the crisis broke out, Suu Kyi said she was open to resettling some of the Rohingya who had fled pending a "verification process". Her supporters said she had been unable to rein in the army. (Suu Kyi has been in power since April 2016.) 

Suu Kyi made her first visit to the conflict zone on November 2 but issued no statement. 

UN investigators called Monday for the prosecution of Myanmar's army chief for genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority after a ferocious army crackdown on them drove more than 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.

The United Nations, on March 6, 2018, called the crackdown "ethnic cleansing". 

"Myanmar is continuing its ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya with a campaign of terror and forced starvation in Rakhine state," it said. 

(With inputs from AFP)