The Malaysian government has begun the process of sending about 5,000 asylum seekers from Myanmar, including Rohingya, back to the country. The repatriation has begun under an agreement with Myanmar’s military ruler, Min Aung Hlaing.
Three Myanmar navy ships are due to leave Malaysia today, carrying 1,476 people in the first phase. Human rights groups have strongly criticised the repatriation, fearing that those sent back will face violence, persecution and forced conscription into the Myanmar army.
The Malaysian government says the repatriation is voluntary. But the UN refugee agency has not been allowed to meet or screen the people, who had been held in various detention centres.
According to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Rohingya will be among those repatriated. Large numbers of this persecuted Muslim minority have fled Myanmar to take refuge in Malaysia. Myanmar does not recognise them as citizens.
Anwar, whose popularity has fallen sharply this year, has said public hostility to the large Rohingya presence in Malaysia is growing, so he had no choice but to negotiate their return with the Myanmar government.
The move marks a significant shift in Anwar’s position. A former political prisoner, he has in the past presented himself as a champion of human rights and freedom and called for more to be done to help the Rohingya. Under his government, Malaysia did not recognise Min Aung Hlaing’s rule, and it has been one of the most vocal countries in Southeast Asia in calling for a negotiated end to Myanmar’s civil war.
What has changed?
Two factors lie behind it. First, economic pressure on low-income Malaysians has grown since the Covid-19 pandemic, fuelling resentment of the Rohingya. Second, Malaysian politics has become more unstable since 2018, when a historic election ousted the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which had dominated the country’s politics for more than six decades. A series of unstable coalition governments has followed.
A shift in public opinion
For many years there was widespread sympathy among Malaysians for persecuted Muslims in Myanmar. In August 2017, a brutal Myanmar army operation forced about 750,000 Rohingya to flee their homes in Rakhine state and take refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.
In the years that followed, because of the dire conditions in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, some of those who could afford it made dangerous sea journeys to Malaysia in search of shelter and work.
Malaysia’s navy and coastguard have long tried to stop boats carrying Rohingya from landing, but many still managed to enter the country by various routes and were allowed to stay for a long time. More than 200,000 Rohingya are now thought to live there, most of them scraping a living as day labourers or in other manual work.
But Malaysian attitudes began to change during the pandemic, which dealt a heavy blow to the economy. When fear of the new coronavirus was at its height, accusations against Rohingya migrants spread on social media, along with demands for their expulsion.
The government of the time took a hard line in response, declaring that Malaysia could take in no more refugees and ordering raids on Rohingya settlements suspected of sheltering illegal migrants.
Much the same happened in 2026. In May, an online complaint claimed that Rohingya had not properly cleaned up animal waste after Eid al-Adha. A widespread social media campaign followed, falsely claiming that Rohingya leaders were demanding land and citizenship in Malaysia.
Shortly afterwards, an online petition on Change.org calling for the Rohingya to be expelled from Malaysia gathered more than 400,000 signatures. The petition was later taken down.
Anwar under pressure
Anwar Ibrahim was once known as a proponent of liberal values, so it was expected that he would stand up to this wave of hatred and disinformation against the Rohingya. He has said the Rohingya must be treated humanely.
“We can arrest them, but they must not be beaten, intimidated or humiliated,” he said in a recent podcast interview. Human rights groups, however, allege that officials are behaving in exactly this way in Malaysia’s immigration detention centres.
Even so, Anwar insists the Rohingya must leave Malaysia. “They have clearly become a burden: a security burden, an economic burden and a source of hostility among the public,” he said in the same interview.
Some of Anwar’s former supporters have accused him of betraying his principles. Latheefa Koya, a former head of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, called his decision “shameful and unprincipled” and said it was damaging the country’s standing in the eyes of the international community.
But Anwar is now under heavy political pressure. Once described as the perennial “prime minister in waiting”, he finally became prime minister in 2022, but only by forming an uneasy coalition with his former rival UMNO.
Since then his own popularity has fallen significantly, and his party has lost seats in recent state elections. He must call a general election by early 2028.
“He is now cornered, and this is his weakest moment,” said Tricia Yeoh, director of the Asian Institute for Policy and Engagement at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. “He has had to make concessions to his UMNO partners… There have been several corruption scandals, and his own party is divided. For four years he has been telling voters this was necessary to keep his fragile coalition together. Now they no longer want to accept that explanation.”
In Yeoh’s view, Malays, who make up more than half the electorate, are responding to UMNO’s long-standing political narrative that they need state support and protection. That kind of ethnic politics breeds fear and resentment of outsiders, she said. “You hear the same kind of rhetoric elsewhere in the world: migrants are taking our jobs, and public money should not be spent on them.”
Forced returns?
The big question now is how the Rohingya will be sent back to Myanmar, which does not recognise them as citizens. Rohingya are not allowed to move freely inside Myanmar and may live only in Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh.
But almost all of Rakhine is now controlled by the rebel Arakan Army, and the Myanmar air force continues to bomb it. On Monday, the day before the repatriation, the Arakan Army said 49 people had been killed when two bombs hit a market in the town of Kyauktaw.
The only conceivable destination for returning Rohingya is Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital. But the city is besieged and cut off, and Rohingya there also live in desperate camps with severe shortages of food and medicine.
Rights groups also fear that men among those returned could be forcibly conscripted into the Myanmar army and sent to fight in the civil war.
Neither the Malaysian nor the Myanmar government has explained how these huge obstacles will be overcome, or how the planned repatriation is consistent with humanitarian principles.
“We all dream of going back to our own country one day. But we want to return in a safe environment and by our own choice, not by force,” said Rohingya refugee rights activist Nur Sadek. “What matters most to me is that the Rohingya and other refugees affected by this decision are heard and treated with dignity.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report