Myanmar government permits UN to probe Rohingya abuse

The Myanmar Government on Wednesday gave permission to the United Nations inspection teams to assess dozens villages and townships in the country's Rakhine State, that were home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims last year.

On Thursday, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday said in hindsight her government could have handled the situation in Rakhine state better.

"There are of course ways (in) which, in hindsight, the situation could have been handled better," she said of the crackdown that led to widespread allegations of atrocities by Myanmar's army.

A total of four teams from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and UN Development Program (UNDP) will spend two weeks in the northern state where the Rohingya were allegedly murdered and subjected to imprisonment and sexual violence at the hands of the Myanmar



military.

However, the country's military, who is known as the Tatmadaw, has repeatedly denied the mounting allegations.

According to UN spokesman Aoife McDonnell, the Myanmar government has given the UN teams to assess 23 individual villages and three other village wards at the weekend, while, the Inspectors began their initial work on Wednesday.

Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Rakhine after government troops led a brutal crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army on 30 Myanmar police posts and a military base in August 2017.

In June, the UN signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Myanmar in which the government agreed "to create the conditions for safe, voluntary and sustainable return while fostering social cohesion," Al Jazeera quoted McDonnell as saying.