The United Nations food aid agency withdrew a critical report revealing desperate hunger among the persecuted Rohingya population after the Myanmar government demanded it be taken down, the Guardian has learned. 
 
 
 
 The July assessment by the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that more than 80,000 children under the age of five living in majority-Muslim areas were “wasting” — a potentially fatal condition of rapid weight loss. 
 
 Rohingya crisis: UN 'suppressed' report predicting its shortcomings in Myanmar Read more 
 
 The six-page document, which was reported on at the time, was replaced with a statement saying Myanmar and WFP were “collaborating on a revised version”. 
 
 That process would involve “representatives from various ministries, and will respond to the need for a common approach” that was in line with “WFP’s future cooperation with the government”. 
 
 The report should not be cited in any way, the statement added. 
 
 However, WFP’s executive director David Beasley said in an emailed statement to the Guardian later on Tuesday that the agency would republish the report. 
 
 “The assessment should not have been removed and I have directed that it be republished immediately in its original form,” Beasley said. “Put simply, the World Food Programme stands firmly behind the findings of the report.” 
 
 He said that the level of food needs in Rakhine state had likely since changed for the worse and called for authorities to allow free and unhindered access to aid deliveries. 
 
 The revelation that the report was spiked will add to a series of recent criticisms that UN did not push the government hard enough for the rights of 1.1 million Rohingya in Myanmar or sound the alarm on their spiralling oppression. 
 
 The issue exploded on 25 August when Rohingya insurgents attacked security forces, who responded with a severe counteroffensive. More than half a million Rohingya have since fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, many alleging the army conducted mass killings and rapes, claims the government denies. 
 
 The UN’s most senior official in the country will leave at the end of the month amid allegations she suppressed another report, a damning consultation of the UN’s strategy, and also attempted to shut down public advocacy on Rohingya suffering. She leaves in the middle of the current crisis, the worst in decades, while a replacement has not been publicly announced. 
 
 Asked why the July study on Rakhine state was removed, WFP said earlier that it was withdrawn from the website “following a request by the government to conduct a joint review”. 
 
 The August violence, however, halted the joint review, it said. 
 
 A consultant who has worked with the UN’s Myanmar office including WFP said the agency’s in-country team were already extremely nervous about the report getting too much attention. 
 
 The assessment indicated that controversial WFP food aid cuts to internally displaced Rohingya over the previous two years had left people in dire need, said the consultant, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely. 
 
 “That was the discussion that was going on behind the scenes and at a senior level,” the source said. “They knew it was potentially damaging. It was all to do with the fact that internally, there was a belief that the decision made to stop feeding some of the [internally displaced people] was actually causing people serious harm, in terms of food security, hunger and even starvation. 
 
 “There was a real sense that they had things to hide in their work in Myanmar. Things had not been going to plan there,” the source added. 
 
 The WFP country office had also been prioritising its relationship with the government above humanitarian needs, the source added, in an attempt to attract millions in donor funding by showing it had government-approved access to work in other parts of the country. 
 
 “It’s a funny thing in the UN. It’s all about how much money you can raise,” the source said. But the access came at the expense of Myanmar’s most hated minority, the Rohingya, a toxic topic to raise with the government, leading to it being side-lined. 
 
 Meanwhile, WFP knew the “government wouldn’t have been happy”, the source said, about the report, which found that in one district, Maungdaw, one-third of all homes were experiencing extreme food deprivation. 
 
 The report called for further humanitarian assistance for more than 225,000 people, a move the government, which has since blocked aid to Rakhine, would not want. 
 
 And alarmingly, the assessment pointed to widespread accounts of security forces preventing Rohingya from reach markets and their crops. 
 
 Documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis – in pictures Read more 
 
 “Restriction of movement was one of the main constraints for the population for accessing food,” it said. “Residents still did not have full access to the forest, agricultural land and fishing grounds due to continuous military presence.” 
 
 The Guardian has contacted the Myanmar government for comment. 
 
 WFP did not respond directly to questions about whether food aid cuts had left vulnerable people in need or whether it the agency had prioritised good relations with the government over the immediate humanitarian needs of the Rohingya. 
 
 “WFP’s purpose in Myanmar is and always has been to address the food and nutrition needs of vulnerable people,” it said. ||||| The United Nations food agency is pressing for immediate access to Burma’s troubled northern Rakhine state amid accusations that it shelved a critical report revealing desperate hunger among the persecuted Muslim population. 
 
 A July assessment by the World Food Programme (WFP) warning that more than 80,000 children under the age of five in majority-Muslim areas were “wasting” – a potentially fatal condition – was removed from public view at the request of the Burmese government, the Guardian reported. 
 
 Instead, the six-page document has been replaced with a statement saying Burma and the WFP are “collaborating on a revised version” and that the report should not be cited in any way. 
 
 Greg Barrow, WFP’s deputy director of communications told the Telegraph that the organisation “stood by” its findings. 
 
 But he said a new assessment had to be made in light of dramatic changes on the ground since a military operation was launched against the Rohingya population after insurgents attacked security posts on August 25. 
 
 However, the WFP, along with other humanitarian aid agencies has been denied access to the conflict zone, a restriction it is urging the Burmese authorities to lift. ||||| The United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, has appealed to Myanmar to end the violence that has led more than 120,000 Rohingya people to flee in the last two weeks, which he warned was “creating a situation that can destabilise the region”. 
 
 The unrest has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis in overstretched border camps, with another 400,000 of the Muslim ethnic minority estimated to be trapped in conflict zones in western Myanmar since more “clearance operations” by security forces in Rakhine state began last month. 
 
 Guterres told reporters he had written to the security council to express his concern. When asked about ethnic cleansing, Guterres said: “We are facing a risk, I hope we don’t get there.” 
 
 UN aid agencies continue to be blocked from delivering food, water and medicine to the Rohingya, while humanitarian workers on the ground say warehouses stocking vital emergency supplies are being looted. 
 
 
 
 As the international outcry over the crisis grew, an aid group that has been rescuing tens of thousands of refugees from the Mediterranean Sea announced it was redirecting its ship to south-east Asia. 
 
 Migrant Offshore Aid Station said it was suspending its operations off the Libyan coast and sending the vessel to the Bay of Bengal. The Malta-based organisation, which has rescued about 40,000 refugees attempting to reach Europe in the last three years, said it would focus on providing aid on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border “where a deadly exodus is unfolding”. 
 
 It cited Pope Francis’s appeals for an international response to the plight of the Rohingya people. The number of refugees fleeing Libya has dropped significantly since the country increased naval patrols and militia groups agreed to crack down on smuggling. 
 
 The UN announced on Tuesday that the number of Rohingya to have reached Bangladesh in recent days was estimated to be 123,600. Up to 15,000 Rohingya refugees are expected to cross the Naf river into Bangladesh each day this week, joining the tens of thousands already taking shelter in overcrowded camps and makeshift settlements. 
 
 Aid groups say supplies are rapidly falling while medical clinics are overwhelmed by a 40-50% increase in patients, some with serious injuries. 
 
 Q&A Who are the Rohingya? Show Hide The Rohingya are Muslims who live in majority-Buddhist Myanmar. They are often described as "the world's most persecuted minority". Nearly all of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya live in the western coastal state of Rakhine. The government does not recognise them as citizens, effectively rendering them stateless. Extremist nationalist movements insist the group are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although the Rohingya say they are native to Rakhine state. 
 
 
 
 Rights groups accuse Burmese authorities of ethnic cleansing, systematically forcing Rohingya from the country through violence and persecution, a charge the government has denied. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP 
 
 Another estimated 20,000 people are stranded in the “no man’s land” between the two countries, having been denied entry by Bangladesh border guards, although thousands continue to cross through unguarded areas. 
 
 The latest wave of refugees, the second significant surge in the past year, was sparked on 25 August after Rohingya militants attacked government forces, who responded with a counter-offensive that has killed hundreds. 
 
 Refugees who have made it to Bangladesh have told of massacres and arson they say are being committed by armed forces. Human Rights Watch has cited satellite evidence of widespread burning in at least 10 parts of Rakhine state in the days after the armed crackdown began. 
 
 The government has said rebels are burning their own villages and accused them of killing Buddhists and Hindus, a claim repeated by some residents. The Myanmar military said 400 people had been killed, the vast majority of them “terrorists”. UN officials have estimated the death toll at “around a thousand”. 
 
 Media and independent observers are denied access to Rakhine and the figures cited by the government and Rohingya activists are impossible to verify. 
 
 The Rohingya have been persecuted for decades in Myanmar but the recent violence is seen as a major escalation because of the scale of the destruction and the involvement of a new Rohingya militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. 
 
 The UN estimated in May this year that since 2012 about 168,000 Rohingya had fled Myanmar, where the group is denied citizenship and access to basic government services. 
 
 International pressure is growing on Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de-facto leader and a Nobel peace laureate, to intervene decisively and curb the military operations. 
 
 More than 300,000 people have signed an online petition asking the Nobel committee to rescind the prize awarded in 1991 for her democratic activism during the years the country was run by a military junta. 
 
 In recent years the military has relaxed its grip on the country but it remains an influential force and holds 25% of parliamentary seats. 
 
 The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said on Monday the situation in Rakhine state was “really grave” and it was time for Aung San Suu Kyi to step in. 
 
 Lee said Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won the country’s first free elections in a generation in 2015, was “caught between a rock and a hard spot. I think it is time for her to come out of that spot now.” 
 
 A Burmese human rights group said on Tuesday that the persecution of Muslims in the Buddhist-majority state had grown in the last five years and extended beyond Rohingya people to include the creation of “Muslim-free zones” across the country. 
 
 
 
 “The transition to democracy has allowed popular prejudices to influence how the new government rules, and has amplified a dangerous narrative that casts Muslims as an alien presence in Buddhist-majority Burma,” the London-based Burma Human Rights Network said in the report. 
 
 Images and reports of the renewed plight of the Rohingya people have drawn condemnation across the world, including from Aung San Suu Kyi’s fellow Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. 
 
 The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has described the violence as a genocide and said Turkey would compensate Bangladesh for taking in the refugees. 
 
 On Monday, demonstrations were held in the Russian republic of Chechnya, where the leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, compared the treatment of the Rohingya to the Holocaust.
– A July report describing near starvation in Myanmar's Rakhine state has been expunged from the UN website—at Myanmar's request. Myanmar was upset with the report's claim that military forces were blocking access to food for the Rohingya even before a government crackdown led 537,000 to flee to Bangladesh, per NPR. But the Guardian reports the UN's World Food Program might have its own reasons for wanting the report erased. According to one source, UN officials knew the report was "potentially damaging," as it suggested WFP food aid cuts to the Rohingya over a two-year period were causing harm, even starvation. "There was a real sense that they had things to hide," the source says. The WFP tells a very different story: The agency "stands by its original assessment" that 80,000 Rohingya children under the age of five were suffering from potentially fatal weight loss in Rakhine in July. However, the food situation will have changed since an "upsurge in violence" in August, "just months before the next harvest," a rep tells the Telegraph. "In a dynamic and evolving situation, it is important to coordinate closely with all partners, including the government," WFP adds, noting its decision to scrap the previous report came "following a request by the government to conduct a joint review." That review has stalled with Myanmar keeping agencies out of the conflict zone, however. The WFP says it's continuing to push for access.