Angelina Jolie joined Myanmar’s opposition leader and democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, to speak to female workers to learn more about their dire conditions in Yangon.
Jolie, who is a special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is on a four-day visit to the Southeast Asian nation.
During her meeting with the factory workers on the outskirts of an industrial zone in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, Jolie and Suu Kyi saw the conditions the women live in — they live in mostly low-cost hostels. Jolie also toured the factory.
She travelled to Kachin state earlier this week, home to more than 10,000 displaced people since a ceasefire between Myanmar’s government and rebels broke down in 2011.
According to her trip details, it is unlikely that Jolie will be able to travel to western Rakhine State, where more than 100,000 Muslim-minority Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions in camps.
It is Jolie’s first visit to Myanmar, which only recently emerged from decades of military rule. More than a dozen ethnic minority groups, mostly in Myanmar’s border areas, have been fighting for greater autonomy since the country attained independence from Britain 67 years ago.
Recently, the world’s attention has turned to the plight of stateless Rohingya Muslims who have been trafficked from Myanmar and Bangladesh aboard overcrowded boats. Dozens of graves as well as pens likely used as cages for Rohingya have been found in abandoned jungle camps on both sides of the Thailand-Malaysian border.