Malaysia’s main Rohingya rights group urged the government on Thursday to halt the planned deportation of some 5,000 stateless asylum seekers to Myanmar, saying their lives would be at risk.
The appeal came a day after Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Myanmar had agreed to take back 5,000 Rohingya, in a rare repatriation push announced days after authorities detained dozens of refugees.
Malaysia hosts more than 215,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with the UN refugee agency, including more than 126,000 members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority, making them the country’s largest refugee community.
The Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization in Malaysia asked Anwar and his home minister to consult the UN refugee agency and Rohingya representatives before any repatriation.
Sending Rohingya back to Myanmar would violate “the core international law principle of non-refoulement, which bans returning people to a place where their lives are threatened,” the rights group said in a statement.
“The Rohingya are stateless... There is no way we can return home safely when we face ongoing genocide back home,” it said.
“How can stateless Rohingya be safe in Myanmar?”
According to the statement, repatriated Rohingya could be forced to join the Myanmar military without training and be used as human shields in fighting with other ethnic groups.
The group also urged the international community to intervene without delay.
Malaysian authorities this week detained more than 100 Rohingya refugees who had gathered outside the UN refugee agency’s office in Kuala Lumpur after being threatened with eviction from an informal settlement in northern Penang state.
Officials later confirmed that the detainees had valid documentation issued by the UN agency.
The group was released on Wednesday and sent to various locations around Malaysia after undergoing final verification, local media reported.
Malaysia, which shelters one of Southeast Asia’s biggest refugee populations, is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not formally recognize refugee status.
AFP fact-checkers have found that Rohingya refugees in Malaysia have been targeted by online disinformation campaigns that rights advocates say are fueling xenophobia and intimidation.
Many of the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim group, escaped Myanmar during a brutal military crackdown in 2017.
