‘They are crying’: Refugees in Malaysia in fear amid Myanmar deportation — SkimNews
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- Malaysia deported nearly 1,500 refugees to Myanmar on Tuesday under a repatriation deal with Myanmar's military government, with plans to send back at least 5,000 total, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
- Immigration raids on refugee communities have escalated sharply since PM Anwar Ibrahim announced the agreement in June, with more than 9,700 operations conducted from January through September 17 (an average of 37 daily), over 50,000 refugees detained this year, and more than 10,000 Myanmar nationals now held in immigration depots.
- Rohingya refugees — numbering more than 126,000 in Malaysia — were not among the first group deported because Myanmar denies their citizenship; the 1,500 returnees were primarily from the Chin community and other ethnic minorities holding valid national ID documents.
- Aid capacity has collapsed since the closure of USAID in July 2025, with UNHCR facing a $5.79 billion global funding gap and having received only 32% of needed funds as of July, leaving even cardholders vulnerable to arrest and 14-day detention while their status is verified.
- UNHCR, SUHAKAM, Amnesty International, and Asylum Access have all challenged the government's "voluntary" framing of the returns, noting that the deportees were held in immigration detention with no independent assessment; SUHAKAM confirmed 27 children were on the ships, some reportedly as young as eight.
- Ongoing violence in Myanmar — including an air strike that killed at least 33 people in Rakhine state a day before the deportation — makes return perilous; the ships are expected to reach Yangon on Sunday, but even those released may face months or years unable to travel safely across the country.
Why it matters: Malaysia hosts 194,000 Myanmar refugees yet is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention; SUHAKAM argues the customary-law principle of non-refoulement still binds it. With UNHCR denied access to verify the "voluntary" nature of returns and ongoing Myanmar military strikes killing dozens of civilians, the deal with a junta that denies Rohingya citizenship creates a deportation pipeline that could return vulnerable people to persecution — starting with those holding documents, but with the stateless Rohingya as the harder test ahead.
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