Nearly 1,500 Rohingya Arrive in Myanmar from Malaysia

YANGON: Nearly 1,500 Myanmar migrants from Malaysia arrived back in their war-torn homeland on Sunday, according to a naval officer from the conflict-hit country.

Three vessels carrying the Myanmar migrants docked at a Myanmar naval base in Thanlyin before 7.30am local time, said the naval officer, whose identity was withheld by AFP because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

AFP journalists saw hundreds of family members gathering outside the base from early morning to welcome their relatives, with cars, taxis and buses lined up to take them home.

Kyaw Myint, 55, said he was there to pick up his three grandchildren, who had been detained in Malaysia for one and a half years and whom he had not seen for six years.

“Since they were sent to prison, we lost contact with them,” he said.

Kyaw Myint said he was now concerned that his grandchildren could be conscripted into Myanmar’s military or recruited by ethnic armed groups.

There are also concerns that members of the persecuted Rohingya community were among those repatriated, after Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced the repatriation amid rising anti-Rohingya sentiment.

However, this has yet to be confirmed.

Three Myanmar naval vessels departed Malaysia on Tuesday carrying 1,476 migrants, according to the Myanmar government.

They were the first group of 5,000 people whom Anwar said Myanmar had agreed to take back.

Myanmar also remains gripped by violence, with 50 people killed late last month in a military air strike on a market in the western state of Rakhine.

The civil war has so far killed more than 100,000 people, according to conflict-monitoring organisation ACLED.

“This is not the time to forcibly return anyone to a country plagued by serious human rights abuses and violations,” United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on Tuesday.

The UN has also warned that conditions in Myanmar, which has been engulfed in civil war since the 2021 military coup, mean that safe returns cannot be guaranteed as required under international law.

AFP/Agencies