Doctors Without Borders negotiates to remain in Burma
Humanitarian group works with long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim population
A day after Doctors Without Borders announced it was being expelled from Burma, the government said Saturday that negotiations with the group were ongoing and that it may be allowed to resume operations everywhere but Rakhine, a state plagued by bloody bouts of sectarian violence.
After intense international pressure, presidential spokesman Ye Htut told The Associated Press that Rakhine's government had asked for the humanitarian group's operations to be suspended in the state, but that its work would not be disrupted elsewhere in the country.
Doctors Without Borders said in a statement that it welcomed the news, but added that it remained concerned about the tens of thousands of people who remain in camps in Myanmar and are in desperate need in care.
All of the aid group's clinics in Burma, also known as Myanmar, were closed Friday.
The group was told earlier in the week that its license was being revoked, in part because it was hiring "Bengalis," the name Myanmar's government uses to refer to the long-persecuted Rohingya ethnic Muslim minority.