Mistrust hinders foreign relief for Myanmar's Rohingya

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Relief agencies struggling to reach hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims displaced by strife in northwestern Myanmar are facing rising hostility from ethnic Rakhine Buddhists who accuse the United Nations and foreign aid groups of only helping Muslims.

So far, the Myanmar government has only granted Red Cross organizations access to the area. The United Nations suspended its activities and evacuated non-critical staff after the government suggested it had supported Rohingya insurgents.

Rohingya refugees scuffle as aid is distributed in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 23, 2017. /Reuters Photo‍

Already battling against bad weather, tough terrain and obstructive bureaucracy, the Red Cross also ran into an angry mob, who believe the foreign aid agencies have ignored the suffering of Rakhine Buddhists in Myanmar's poorest state.

On Wednesday a mob in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, tried to block a boat carrying International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) aid to the north, where attacks by Rohingya militants on August 25 prompted Myanmar's generals to order a sweeping counter-insurgency offensive.

The mob was armed with sticks, knives and petrol bombs, and only dispersed after police fired rubber bullets.

Four days earlier a Myanmar Red Cross truck was stopped and searched by Rakhine residents in Sittwe.

"With heightened tensions in Rakhine State, humanitarian staff and private contractors are facing serious challenges in implementing life-saving activities," said Pierre Peron, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Myanmar.

In the past month, 420,000 Rohingya have fled into neighboring Bangladesh to avoid what the UN human rights chief has called ethnic cleansing.

Rohingya refugees walk on a muddy path after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, in Teknaf, Bangladesh, September 6, 2017. /Reuters Photo

Foreign aid groups are now scaling up to help Bangladesh cope with a humanitarian disaster of biblical proportions.

Back in Myanmar, a separate crisis is unfolding on multiple fronts, many of them much harder to reach.

In northern Rakhine, tens of thousands of people, most of them Rohingya, are displaced but haven't crossed into Bangladesh.

Closer to Sittwe, 140,000 Rohingya displaced by previous religious unrest are confined to squalid camps. They depend on foreign aid that has been severely restricted since August 25.

About 6,000 Buddhists have also fled to Sittwe, where they are cared for at monasteries by the government and Rakhine volunteers.

Broken trust

Ethnic Rakhine have long complained that foreign aid agencies have given generously to Muslims while ignoring other equally needy people.

Rakhine residents of Sittwe said they believed that UN estimates of refugee numbers were exaggerated, and that Rohingya camps near the city faced no shortages.

Htun Aung Kyaw, secretary general of the Arakan National Party, gestures during an interview at the party's headquarters in Sittwe, Myanmar, September 20, 2017. /Reuters Photo

"They have more than enough," said Kyaw Sein of Rakhine Alin Dagar, a Rakhine advocacy group in Sittwe.

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Source(s): Reuters