Myanmar relief crippled by Buddhist mistrust of foreign workers

Ethnic Rakhine complain that foreign aid agencies have given generously to Muslims while ignoring others in need.

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.

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 25 August 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.

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

“All people in Rakhine are suffering, but only Muslims get help,” said Htun Aung Kyaw, chief of the Arakan National Party (ANP).

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

Kyaw Sein said she hadn’t visited the camps, but said in the past she had seen Muslims selling oil, rice and other aid in local markets.

She said relations between the foreign aid groups and the Rakhine people had been poisoned by years of neglect and favouritism.

Further eroding that trust are rumors that aid deliveries could be used to smuggle weapons to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the militant group behind the attacks on security forces last month and in October 2016. Such fears have been stoked by social media and by the discovery of World Food Program-branded biscuits at a suspected militant camp on 30 July.

They have also prompted the authorities to restrict humanitarian access to some Rohingya villages on security grounds, say aid workers.

Rakhine interviewed by Reuters said the Rohingya did this to win sympathy from aid groups, galvanize opposition in the Muslim world and ensure that nearby Rakhine houses burned down too.