On Monday, the UN’s Special Rapporteur to Myanmar Yanghee Lee arrived in Yangon for the beginning of her 11-day assessment of the country.
However, her trip was off to a somewhat rocky start as government officials denied Lee access to the towns of Laiza and Hpakant in Kachin State — two areas that the UN’s official press release said Lee would be visiting.
Officials informed Lee and her envoy that they were not allowed to visit the conflict-torn regions due to ‘security reasons’.
As a result, the team instead visited various internationally displaced persons camps run by the Kachin Baptist Convention in the state capital of Myitkyina.
Laiza is the headquarter of the Kachin Independence Army, while Hpakant is the center of the state’s jade mining industry.
It is estimated that thousands of Kachin citizens have been displaced and forced to live in makeshift shelters in the middle of winter as a result of the fighting between several ethnic armed groups and the Myanmar Tatmadaw over the past several months.
Just last week, Kachin nationals living in Thailand held an anti-Tatmadaw demonstration in front of the Myanmar Consulate in Chiang Mai.
