September 21, 2017 – Ottawa, Ontario Prime Minister Justin Trudeau missed a major opportunity today to show the world Canadian leadership on the Rohingya crisis. The Prime Minister could have sent a strong signal to the world in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly today if he had mentioned the plight of the Rohingya, and the responsibility of the international community to respond quickly to prevent additional bloodshed and act on the growing humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Bangladesh. The fact that he chose not to is very disappointing, and this is likely the reaction of the vast majority of you who have signed my petition. The Canadian government’s concern about a people in a country where Canada has no deep connections (beyond the citizenship honour it gave to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi) would have played well to those nations that Canada is lobbying to obtain a temporary seat on the UN Security Council. They would have seen Canada standing up for the ‘little guy’ and this would have reflected well on how Canada would use its voice were it to have a seat at the Security Council. Canada’s voice carries influence on the international stage, and middle powers and smaller nations in particular would have listened to Canada’s Prime Minister if he would have used a couple of paragraphs in his speech to talk about the Rohingya. The fact that he didn't is a lost opportunity. The plight of the Rohingya has galvanized Canadians to speak out about Canada’s tepid response to the Rohingya crisis. Over 32,000 people have been moved to sign my petition on Change.org, and tens of thousands more have signed similar petitions on other platforms. In addition to calling for Suu Kyi’s Canadian honour to be revoked, this petition also calls on Canada to condemn unequivocally the brutal actions of the Myanmar government, its military and state-supported nationalist groups who have committed not just ethnic cleansing but crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya. Furthermore, the Canadian government needs to: * Take leadership at the UN and on the international stage to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar, and work with international partners to bring the perpetrators of the crimes committed in Myanmar to justice; * Work with international agencies and allies to create a safe haven for the Rohingya in their homeland under the UN protocol of “Responsibility to Protect”; and * Work with the UN High Commission for Refugees and other nations to make sure that those Rohingya refugees living in refugee camps who choose to settle in other countries are able to do so without difficulty. The UN has called the Rohingya the "most persecuted minority in the world", and while the persecution has been going on for decades it has recently reach “a new level of brutality”. This is something on which Canadians are saying that the Canadian government cannot be silent. Silence is not an option because lives are literally hanging in the balance.