MSF Restarts Operations in Strife-Torn West Myanmar

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced Wednesday it had resumed work in parts of Myanmar's Rakhine state, nine months after its ejection from the conflict-racked region sparked a health crisis.

MSF was ordered to stop work in Rakhine early last year after it became the target of protests by Buddhist nationalists, who accused it of giving preferential treatment to stateless Rohingya Muslims.

The medical aid group said  Wednesday it had reopened its primary health clinics in Rakhine in December, giving tens of thousands of patients access to basic medical care for the first time since they were shuttered in February. 

"We welcome the progress we have made so far, but stress there is space to do more, space we at MSF are willing and able to fill," said Martine Flokstra, MSF Myanmar operational adviser, in a statement. 

Some 140,000 people, mainly Rohingya, are trapped in miserable camps in Rakhine state following violence between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012 that left around 200 dead.

Resentment between the largely segregated communities has continued to fester in Rakhine, fuelling perceptions of bias that saw several international aid agencies and the United Nations forced to briefly pull out of the state after their offices were targeted in riots in early 2014.

MSF, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 and has operated in Myanmar for over two decades, said it had first cautiously returned to the tense region in July, providing personnel and medicine for health ministry mobile medical teams around the state capital Sittwe.  

MSF's primary healthcare services are focused in several remote areas of Rakhine near the border with Bangladesh, where Rohingya communities have long had their movements severely restricted. They are largely unable to access state facilities.

On Friday United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, warned that continuing acute tensions between Muslims and Buddhists could have "far-reaching implications".

The U.N. envoy has herself faced fiery protests from Buddhist nationalists who accuse her of sympathizing with the Rohingya.

A recent U.N. resolution urged Myanmar to grant the stateless Rohingya access to citizenship -- stoking controversy in the country, where many view the group as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.