A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
(Full Story)
Search This Blog
Back to 500BC.
==========================
Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Friday, May 12, 2017
Burma: Red Cross calls on govt to allow aid workers to access Rohingya
11th May 2017
THE International Committee of the Red Cross has
asked Myanmar to let aid workers get access to people caught up in
conflicts that have displaced tens of thousands despite a transition
that brought Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to power.
Authorities have blocked the ICRC from areas under the control of ethnic
minority forces and from visiting some prisoners, the organisation’s
president, Peter Maurer, told reporters late on Wednesday in the
commercial capital, Yangon.
“We would like to have access to all the people in need in order to do
proper assessments, to help ease according to needs,” he said.
Maurer visited the northwestern state of Rakhine, where he toured camps
set up almost five years ago to house those displaced by communal
clashes between Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.
He did not visit the north of the state, where a security operation in
response to insurgent attacks in October sent an estimated 74,000 people
fleeing to Bangladesh.
Troops and police have been accused of killing and raping Rohingyas, who
are denied citizenship in Myanmar and widely viewed as interlopers from
Bangladesh.
The government only recently allowed international aid workers to visit
affected villages, under the condition that they are accompanied by
government officials, the U.N. humanitarian agency said on May 1.
A separate ICRC delegation visited detainees in the area last month.
Maurer was set to visit Kachin State in the north on Thursday, but the
government denied a request to visit the Kachin Independence Army (KIA)
stronghold of Laiza.
The ICRC is assisting a civilian hospital there, but staff have not been
able to visit since fighting between the KIA and government forces
broke out eight months ago.
Maurer travels to the capital, Naypyidaw, on Friday to meet officials
and he will meet Suu Kyi in Beijing during an international conference
there next week, he said.
Former political prisoner Suu Kyi won a landslide in elections before
becoming the de facto head of the civilian administration in April 2016
after decades of military rule.
But her priority of securing peace with autonomy-seeking minority
insurgents has been set back by fighting that has displaced an estimated
160,000 more people since the transition, according to U.N. data.
Suu Kyi’s spokesman, Zaw Htay, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Maurer said access to conflict areas was “always a difficult equation of
security considerations versus needs of people for assistance and
protection,” but he was “unsatisfied” by the limits in place in Myanmar.
Granting more access was in the interests of the government and the armed forces, he said.
“At the end of the day there is no more effective tool to ease tensions
than to offer fluid procedures for access to humanitarian organizations
like us,” he said. – Reuters