An already difficult humanitarian situation in areas of Burma has been made yet worse by the withdrawal of the Red Cross, affecting in particular minority communities.
Below is an article published by BosNewsLife;
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Friday, March 16, that restrictions by Burma’s military government forced it to close two offices, a move that underscored Western concerns over a lack of humanitarian aid in regions where predominantly Christian Karens and other groups are fleeing a military offensive.
The ICRC said it was forced to close in the regions of Mon state and Shan state. Thierry Ribaux, who is the deputy head of the Red Cross mission in Burma, which is also called Myanmar, said his group had "dramatically scaled down" operations.
"[But] we remain committed to a mandate, we remain determined to stay in Yangon (Rangoon) but now we need a very clear positive signal from the authorities - otherwise we will have to decide on further reductions," the Voice Of America (VOA) network quoted him as saying.
It came shortly after British Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, returned last week from the Thailand-Burma border, where he accompanied Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) to hear the testimonies of Karen Internally Displaced People (IDPs) just inside the Burma border, BosNewsLife learned.
Mitchell also met representatives of what his delegation called "Burma’s ruling junta" in Rangoon, the first time they have met with a senior British politician in a decade, CSW said in a statement. He reportedly told U Kyaw Thu, the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister and a former brigadier general, that the regime running Burma is "wicked and illegitimate".
Over 25,000 civilians, many of them Christian Karens, were forced to flee their villages in the past year, following "the worst" military crackdown in a decade, CSW and other observers have said. "Since 1996, over 3,000 villages in eastern Burma have been destroyed [and] there are over one million IDPs in eastern Burma, and over 150,000 refugees in Thailand," CSW said in a statement seen by BosNewsLife.
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