KUALA LUMPUR (UCAN): International rights groups have demanded Malaysian authorities stop the forced repatriation of Myanmese nationals whose lives are at most risk.
Human Rights Watch [HRW] called on the Malaysian government to immediately halt summary deportations and grant UNHCR access to asylum seekers to determine their refugee status.
The rights group said that since April, immigration authorities have returned over 2,000 Myanmese nationals, including military defectors, without assessing thaeir asylum claims or other protection needs—more than half of them in the past two months.
On October 6, 150 Myanmese, including six navy officers and their families who were seeking protection from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], were deported and the officers were arrested upon their arrival in Myanmare, according to a Reuters report.
“Sending asylum seekers back to Myanmar means putting activists, dissidents and persecuted minorities in the crosshairs of the repressive junta,” Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher at HRW, said on October 24.
About 185,000 refugees and asylum seekers— he majority from Myanmar, including over 100,000 Rohingya—are registered with the UNHCR in Malaysia. At least 17,500 people are being held in 21 immigration detention centres across the country, including more than 1,500 children, according to HRW.
Amnesty International called for the Malaysian government to immediately stop all forced deportations of people from Myanmar and ensure they are given the opportunity to claim asylum.
Sending asylum seekers back to Myanmar means putting activists, dissidents and persecuted minorities in the crosshairs of the repressive junta
Shanya Bauchner
“The government must stop forcibly deporting asylum seekers—including dissidents or any other opponents of the Myanmar military—and others facing persecution if they were to be returned,” the group said.
The organisation considers forcibly deporting anyone from Myanmar under the current conditions to be refoulement—when a government deports people to a country in which they would likely face human rights violations—which contravenes international law.
The UNHCR called on Myanmar’s neighbours to continue “upholding their international legal obligations and life-saving humanitarian tradition of safeguarding the lives of all those forced to flee.”
Rights groups see the move by Malaysia as contradicting its outspoken foreign minister, Saifuddin Abdulah, who has repeatedly called for a new approach to the five-point peace plan reached by the ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] in April 2021 following the lack of implementation by the junta.
Saifuddin is the only leader from ASEAN who has openly met with Myanmar’s opposition National Unity Government and urged other counterparts to do so.
“The deportations are especially tragic given that Malaysia has played a leading role in standing up for the human rights of the people of Myanmar and encouraging other ASEAN member states to engage with stakeholders as part of the bloc’s five-point consensus,” Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar, chairperson of the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar, said.
The country has been mired in political, social and economic crises following the 1 February 2021 coup that toppled the elected civilian government, ending a nascent democracy experiment.
More than 2,300 people, including scores of children, have been killed and over 15,700 people have been detained by the junta since the coup, rights groups say.
