Myanmar repatriates 10,000 migrants from Malaysia

Myanmar has repatriated nearly 10,000 migrants from Malaysia this year, state media said yesterday, a day after a flotilla returning almost 1,500 of its citizens docked in the country.

The UN has sharply criticized Malaysia’s push to return migrants to Myanmar under an opaque scheme it says cannot guarantee safe homecomings to the war-torn nation.

A group of 1,476 returnees arrived by ship outside Yangon on Sunday, the first of 5,000 that Kuala Lumpur says Myanmar agreed to take back amid a wave of anti-migrant sentiment in Malaysia.

Burmese nationals who were sent back from Malaysia gather at a temple for their registration processes with immigration officials in Thanlyin, Myanmar, on Sunday.

Photo: AP

Rights monitors have raised concerns that members of the Rohingya minority might be sent back to Myanmar, where they have faced violent persecution, but Malaysia has not commented on the ethnicities of returnees.

Myanmar yesterday said that a parallel and larger repatriation push has also been taking place by plane.

From January to August this year, “8,041 citizens were repatriated by air,” state newspaper the Global New Light of Myanmar said.

While the ship returns have been highly publicized in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur has not commented on the returns Myanmar says it organized by weekly flights.

The total number of migrants Myanmar has said returned by plane and ship this year is 9,517.

Malaysia said that returnees under its scheme agreed to voluntary repatriation from detention centers, where Myanmar says they had “faced difficulties” after serving sentences for immigration offenses.

However, rights groups report dire conditions in the facilities, and the UN refugee agency says staff were not allowed to verify that decisions to return “were genuinely free and informed.”

More than 100,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Myanmar since a military coup in 2021 unleashed civil war, monitor organization ACLED said.

The Rohingya started fleeing the country en masse to Malaysia before that, escaping a military crackdown starting in 2017 deemed a genocide by rights groups — a charge the armed forces have always denied.

The Rohingya make up two-thirds of the 190,000 Myanmar refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, according to UN data, and have been the focus of recent anti-migrant sentiment.

After the ships carrying the 1,476 migrants docked on Sunday in Thanlyin, just south of Yangon, AFP journalists saw dozens moved to a monastery holding center for ID and health checks.

“Necessary arrangements are continuing to facilitate their swift reunion with relatives and family members, ensuring their safe return to their respective hometowns,” the Global New Light of Myanmar said.