Myanmar suspends aid work by Doctors Without Borders

The Myanmar government says it has suspended the activity of a prominent aid group which provides help to impoverished Muslims in troubled Rakhine State, a report says.

Myanmar’s presidential spokesman, Ye Htut, said on Friday that the operations of Doctors Without Borders [Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)] have been suspended since Wednesday, Myanmar Freedom newspaper reported.

The official added that the group’s contract in Rakhine State would not be extended because of its biased service toward Muslims including the hiring of “Bengalis” – the term the government uses for Rohingya.

The suspension comes after the aid agency said it treated injured people in its clinic near a site where Muslims had been reportedly mass murdered.

The aid agency has been providing much-needed healthcare services to the Muslim population in Rakhine.

“Today for the first time in MSF’s history of operations in the country…clinics in Rakhine, Shan and Kachin states, as well as Yangon division, were closed and patients were unable to receive the treatment they needed,” the group said in a statement.

More than 100,000 people have been displaced and hundreds killed since Myanmar’s ethnic violence erupted in 2012 after Buddhist extremists attacked the Rohingya Muslim minority there.

International bodies and human rights organizations have accused Myanmar’s government of turning a blind eye to the violence, while aiding the extremist Buddhists in carrying out crimes against Muslims.

Rohingya Muslims account for about five percent of Myanmar’s population of nearly 60 million.

They have been persecuted and have faced torture, neglect, and repression since the country’s independence in 1948.