Red Cross head presses Myanmar junta for more aid access

YANGON: The head of the International Red Cross has pressed Myanmar's junta chief for greater humanitarian access to conflict-hit areas of the country during a rare face-to-face meeting, the organisation said on Tuesday (Sep 10).

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government in 2021, sparking armed uprisings across the country.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) president Mirjana Spoljaric met top general Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw on Monday, the ICRC said in a statement.

During the meeting she "advocated for greater access to conflict-affected areas", it said, without giving details.

Spoljaric also visited western Rakhine state during her Sep 5 to Sep 9 visit and saw the "dire humanitarian needs" there, according to an ICRC statement.

Since November, Rakhine has been rocked by clashes between the military and the Arakan Army (AA), which says it is fighting for autonomy for the state's ethnic Rakhine population.

Rights groups say both the military and the AA are forcibly conscripting Rohingya and carrying out extrajudicial killings against the minority.

A 2017 military crackdown in Rakhine forced hundreds of thousands of the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority to flee to Bangladesh, where they now languish in sprawling refugee camps.

The crackdown is now the subject of a genocide investigation at the UN's top court.

Last week Bangladesh authorities said around 8,000 more Rohingya had fled into Bangladesh amid fighting between the military and the AA.

Spoljaric and Min Aung Hlaing "exchanged views on the undertakings of the ICRC to provide humanitarian aid in Myanmar, the need to cooperate with relevant ministries", the state-run The Global New Light of Myanmar reported.

In June 2021 then ICRC president Peter Maurer met Min Aung Hlaing in Myanmar and requested the charity be allowed to resume "humanitarian visits and activities" in Myanmar's prisons paused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Discussions on the resumption of prison visits by ICRC staff "are still ongoing", the ICRC's media office told AFP on Tuesday.

More than 20,000 political prisoners are languishing in Myanmar's jails as a result of the junta's crackdown on dissent, according to a local monitoring group.

In response to a question on whether Spoljaric had asked to meet detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the media office said: "We are still advocating to resume our detention visits, and supporting their families whenever possible."

The situation in Myanmar is "deeply alarming", with clashes, destruction of infrastructure and restrictions on movement hampering humanitarian access, the ICRC said in its report for the six months to June this year.

The "response to the increasing humanitarian needs remains insufficient", it added.

More than 2.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes since the coup, according to the United Nations.