3 Min Read
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Nearly 100 asylum-seekers are among 1,200 Myanmar nationals Malaysia plans to send home next week, refugee groups said on Thursday, in a move activists fear could put the deportees’ lives at risk.
Last week, Reuters reported the Southeast Asian nation had agreed to return the 1,200 Myanmar citizens after its neighbour’s military, which seized power in a Feb. 1 coup, offered to send navy ships to pick up those detained.
Although Malaysia is not a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention and detains refugees with other undocumented migrants, it has vowed not to deport Rohingya Muslims and refugees identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Malaysia to deport Myanmar asylum-seekers next week, refugee groups say reuters.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from reuters.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
‘Grant UNHCR access to detention centres’ 25 Feb 2021 / 10:58 H.
PETALING JAYA: It is important for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) be granted access to all detention centres in determining asylum-seekers and refugees, said activists.
In making the call, Amnesty International Malaysia (AIM) and Asylum Access Malaysia (AAM) said this will prevent individuals from being deported.
They were referring to 1,086 individuals sent back to their homeland on Myanmar navy ships on Tuesday.
The individuals were part of the 1,200 people which AIM and AAM had filed a joint judicial review on Tuesday.
“We know people on the (deported) list are under asylum,” AIM executive director Katrina Jorene Maliamauv said in a virtual news conference yesterday.
[Reuters]
Malaysia plans to deport asylum-seekers among the 1,200 Myanmar nationals it is sending home next week, a refugee group told BenarNews on Thursday, while rights groups expressed shock at a move they said would endanger lives after the military coup.
Among those who will be deported are at least nine members of the ethnic Chin community who, like Rohingya Muslims, face state-backed discrimination in their country, said James Bawi Thang Bik, of the Kuala Lumpur-based Alliance of Chin Refugees.
“We have nine people [who want asylum] from my community and they are from the conflict zone in our country,” Thang Bik said late Thursday, referring to the Chin and Rakhine states, where Myanmar’s army and Arakan Army rebels have been involved in deadly clashes since November 2018.