Nearly 1,500 Myanmar migrants from Malaysia returned to their war-torn home country on Sunday, a Myanmar official said, under an opaque repatriation scheme that rights monitors say cannot assure their safety.
Hundreds of families gathered at dawn to collect their relatives outside the Myanmar Navy base in Thanlyin, where cars, taxis and buses were parked in ranks.
Some held 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 brought 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.
The United Nations has warned 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 all returnees agreed to voluntary repatriation from detention centres, but the UN and rights groups have raised concerns that Myanmar migrants had little choice.
Returnees were transported out of the base on Yangon city buses, some wearing T-shirts reading “We love Myanmar”.
Kyaw Myint, 55, said he showed up to collect three grandchildren who had been detained in Malaysia for one and a half years, and who he has not seen in six years.
Now he is worried about them being conscripted in Myanmar — “not only by the military but also by ethnic armed groups”, he said.
– Anti-Rohingya sentiment –
Three Myanmar Navy ships carrying the migrants docked at the Thanlyin base just before 7:30 am (0100 GMT), according to a naval official who AFP has kept anonymous as he was not authorised to speak to media.
The ships left Malaysia on Tuesday carrying 1,476 migrants, according to the Myanmar government — the first of 5,000 that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim says Myanmar agreed to take back.
The arrivals were due to include mostly men, as well as 27 children and 79 women, 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 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 onboard.
– ‘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 its staff were not allowed to meet migrants to confirm whether their decisions to return “were genuinely free and informed”.
Myanmar state television has broadcast footage of the migrants on the journey home, being led in aerobics classes on a ship deck and wearing T-shirts saying: “Happy voyage back to motherland”.
Malaysia is already moving ahead with plans to return a second group of more than 3,500 migrants.
Migrants have “imposed a significant financial burden on the nation, triggered serious social crises, and created tangible security threats for the Malaysian people”, the home ministry has said.
Myanmar leader Min Aung Hlaing, the coup leader who was installed as civilian president in April, is expected to soon visit Malaysia to discuss the scheme.
Myanmar last month pledged returns will 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 is also riven by violence, with 50 people killed late last month in a military airstrike.
The civil war has so far killed more than 100,000 people since the coup, 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 Tuesday.
