Nearly 1,500 Myanmar migrants from Malaysia arrived in their war-torn homeland today under a repatriation scheme that has drawn concerns over whether their return is genuinely voluntary and safe.
Three ships carrying 1,476 migrants docked at the Myanmar Navy base in Thanlyin shortly before 7.30am, according to a Myanmar Navy official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Hundreds of family members gathered at dawn outside the base to collect their relatives, with cars, taxis and buses lined up to take them away.
Kyaw Myint, 55, told AFP he was there to collect three grandchildren who had been held in Malaysian detention for one and a half years. He said he had not seen them for six years.
‘Since they arrived in prison we lost contact with them,’ he said.
Kyaw Myint said he was now worried that his grandchildren could be conscripted, ‘not only by the military but also by ethnic armed groups’.
Concerns over returnees’ safety
There are also concerns that members of the persecuted Rohingya community could be among those returned.
The possibility has not been confirmed, while Malaysia has not responded to an AFP query about the number of Rohingya among the returnees.
The three Myanmar Navy ships left Malaysia on Tuesday carrying 1,476 migrants, according to the Myanmar government. They are the first group among 5,000 migrants that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Myanmar had agreed to take back.
However, the United Nations has warned that safe returns cannot be guaranteed in Myanmar, which has been consumed by civil war since the 2021 military coup.
‘We have no idea how his life will be back in Myanmar,’ said the 25-year-old sister of one migrant who told his family he expected to be sent aboard the ships.
‘Our main concern is his arrival won’t be safe,’ she told AFP from Malaysia, requesting anonymity for security reasons after losing contact with her brother before the vessels departed.
Malaysian media reported that the arrivals included 27 children and 79 women, with the remaining 1,370 being adult men.
Questions over voluntary repatriation
Anwar announced the repatriations in July, days after more than 100 Rohingya asylum seekers were detained in Kuala Lumpur amid rising xenophobia towards refugees, particularly the Rohingya community.
The planned returns sparked widespread concern after members of the ethnic group fled Myanmar in large numbers following a military crackdown that began in 2017, which rights experts have described as genocide.
Malaysia maintains that all returnees agreed to voluntary repatriation from detention centres, where Myanmar says they had completed sentences for immigration offences.
However, monitoring organisations including Fortify Rights have reported dire conditions at the facilities.
The UN refugee agency said this week that its staff were not allowed to meet the returnees to establish whether their decisions ‘were genuinely free and informed’.
Myanmar state television has broadcast footage of the migrants during the journey home, showing them taking part in aerobics on a ship deck and wearing T-shirts bearing the words ‘Happy voyage back to motherland’.
More returns planned
Malaysia is already moving ahead with plans to return a second group of more than 3,500 migrants.
The Home Ministry has said migrants have ‘imposed a significant financial burden on the nation, triggered serious social crises, and created tangible security threats for the Malaysian people’.
Myanmar leader Min Aung Hlaing, who was installed as civilian president in April, is expected to visit Malaysia soon to discuss the repatriation scheme.
Myanmar pledged last month that the returns would be ‘safe and dignified’.
But Yap Lay Sheng, a senior human rights specialist with Fortify Rights, told AFP: ‘There’s no telling how the regime would treat returnees.’
Myanmar continues to face violence, including a military airstrike late last month that killed 50 people at a marketplace in western Rakhine state.
The civil war has killed more than 100,000 people, according to monitor ACLED.
‘This is no time to return anyone forcibly to a country plagued by egregious human rights violations and abuses,’ UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Tuesday.
