Malaysia sends 1,500 Myanmar nationals home on junta warships a day after airstrike killed 49

Mizzima

Malaysia began deporting around 1,500 Myanmar nationals on Tuesday aboard two Myanmar navy warships and a hospital ship, one day after a military airstrike on a market in Rakhine State killed at least 49 people.

According to Malaysia’s Home Ministry, the group of 1,476 people was identified by the Myanmar government and forms the first phase of a programme to return up to 5,000 people now held in immigration detention. Buses under police escort arrived at a stadium near the Lumut naval base in Perak state on Tuesday morning, and those on board were processed before being moved to the port.

Malaysia is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not formally recognise refugee status. As of February, the country hosted around 193,800 refugees from Myanmar of various ethnicities, including Rohingya and Chin, according to UN refugee agency data, and activists say many more remain unregistered. Malaysian authorities did not say how many of those sent back on Tuesday were Rohingya.

The returns began a day after a fighter jet dropped two bombs near a market in Kyauktaw township around noon on 28 September, killing vendors, shoppers and pedestrians. The Arakan Army, which controls the town, said 49 people were killed and 58 wounded, 22 of them critically, and warned the toll could rise. The military has not commented on the strike.

ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) called on Malaysia to halt the programme immediately and suspend further returns until conditions allow safe and voluntary movement. Charles Santiago, a former member of parliament for Klang and APHR co-chairperson, said “Nobody chooses freely from inside a detention center.”

The UN refugee agency has said it has no role in the programme, and that ongoing armed conflict and violence across Myanmar make safe, dignified and sustainable return impossible. It has urged that the protection needs of everyone concerned be assessed before any transfer, noting that customary international law binds all states not to send people to places where their rights are at risk.

Those being returned also face the junta’s conscription drive, which APHR says has pressed as many as 120,000 people into military service. Malaysia’s government has previously pledged that no one would be returned if their life would be threatened or if they faced persecution.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced in July that Myanmar had agreed to take back 5,000 people, and has since signalled he would invite junta leader Min Aung Hlaing for an official visit to speed up later phases.