Rohingya

SITTWE, Myanmar — When the kicking stopped, Zura Begum suspected something was wrong with the twins she was supposed to deliver that month. When the pain started shooting through her body, all doubt was erased. She needed help, but had nowhere to turn. She was trapped with thousands of other Muslim Rohingya in a squalid, dusty camp in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The foreign aid workers she had relied on early in her pregnancy were gone — forced out by a distrustful government and extremist Buddhist mobs. Getting help outside the camps, in hospitals run by the Buddhist Rakhine majority, requires special permission that is harder than ever to obtain.

SITTWE, BURMA — In western Burma’s Rakhine state, authorities asked international aid group Doctors Without Borders (known by its French name Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF) to cease operations after accusations of aid bias. Activists say the ban will leave nearly 700,000 people without access to much needed medical care in the country's second-most impoverished region.