First batch of migrants from Malaysia under repatriation plan return to war-torn Myanmar

Thanlyin, Myanmar – Nearly 1,500 Myanmar migrants from Malaysia returned to their war-torn home country on Oct 4, a Myanmar Navy official said, under an opaque repatriation scheme that rights monitors say cannot assure their safety.

Dozens of migrants were transported on buses to a Buddhist monastery hall for immigration and health checks, AFP journalists saw, after the returnees arrived by Myanmar Navy ships that docked at a nearby base in Thanlyin.

“I haven’t met my family yet,” said Kyaw Swar Thein, 53, who worked at a coffee shop in Malaysia before he was arrested there.

He said he suffered scabies while in detention for a year and eight months – one reason he wanted to come home. Now, his future seems unclear.

“I do not hope for anything,” he said among the rows of men sitting cross-legged on the floor, some wearing T-shirts reading “We love Myanmar”.

The United Nations has warned that conditions in Myanmar, which has been consumed by civil war since a 2021 military coup, mean safe homecomings cannot be guaranteed as required under international law.

Malaysia insists that all returnees agreed to voluntary repatriation from detention centres, but the UN and rights groups have raised concerns that the migrants had little choice.

Hundreds of families gathered at dawn outside the naval base in Thanlyin to pick up their relatives, some holding up paper signs with photographs or the names of their relatives.

While some were allowed past the gates to welcome their family members, a naval official dashed hopes of immediate reunions for most.

“You cannot take them right away,” he shouted into a megaphone, saying returnees would be taken to different locations in the Yangon region where relatives could meet them later.

One woman said she was looking for her 19-year-old brother who was arrested in Malaysia soon after he arrived there three months ago.

“We saw his name on the list of returnees but we couldn’t go inside to find him,” said the woman who declined to give her name for security reasons.

Kyaw Myint, 55, said he was worried that his three grandchildren, who were detained in Malaysia for more than a year, could now be conscripted in Myanmar – “not only by the military, but also by ethnic armed groups”.

Anti-Rohingya sentiment

Three Myanmar Navy ships carrying the migrants docked at the Thanlyin base early on Oct 4, said a naval official who AFP has kept anonymous as he was not authorised to speak to media.

The ships left Malaysia on Sept 29 carrying 1,476 migrants, according to the Myanmar government – the first of 5,000 that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Myanmar had agreed to take back. The arrivals were to include mostly men, as well as 79 women and 27 children, Malaysian media said.

“Our main concern is his arrival won’t be safe,” said the 25-year-old sister of one migrant who had told his family he expected to be sent aboard the ships.

There are also concerns that members of the persecuted Rohingya are among the returned group, after Anwar announced the repatriations in July against a backdrop of rising xenophobia against refugees, particularly the Rohingya.

Members of the ethnic group fled Myanmar en masse following a military crackdown starting in 2017, which rights experts say amounted to genocide.

Rohingya make up the majority of Myanmar refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, but Kuala Lumpur has not responded to an AFP query about the number on board the ships.

‘No time to return’

Myanmar says the returnees completed sentences for immigration offences in Malaysia.

Monitor organisations such as Fortify Rights report dire conditions in the detention centres.

The UN refugee agency said this past week that its staff were not allowed to meet migrants to confirm whether their decisions to return “were genuinely free and informed”.

Meanwhile, Malaysia is moving ahead with plans to return a second group of more than 3,500 migrants.

Min Aung Hlaing, the coup leader who was installed as Myanmar’s civilian president in April 2026, is expected to visit Malaysia soon to discuss the scheme. Myanmar in September pledged that returns will be “safe and dignified”.

But Yap Lay Sheng, a senior human rights specialist at Fortify Rights, told AFP: “There’s no telling how the regime would treat returnees.”

Myanmar’s civil war has so far killed more than 100,000 people, including 50 in a military air strike in late September.

UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Sept 29: “This is no time to return anyone forcibly to a country plagued by egregious human rights violations and abuses.” AFP