Malaysia’s hard turn on the Rohingya begins with a convoy of ships

Malaysia has decided that a humanitarian problem can be managed with naval transport and a change of tone. The government has begun repatriating around 5,000 asylum seekers from Myanmar, with three Myanmar navy ships scheduled to carry the first 1,476 returnees later today. The deal was struck with Min Aung Hlaing’s military government, which already tells you enough about the company Kuala Lumpur has chosen to keep.

The move has drawn sharp condemnation from human rights groups, who say the returnees face violence, persecution and forced conscription into the Myanmar army. Malaysia says the repatriation is voluntary, yet the UN refugee agency has been barred from seeing or screening the people held in detention centres. That detail sits awkwardly beside the official language, as such details tend to do.

At the centre of the dispute are the Rohingya, the Muslim minority that has sought sanctuary in Malaysia in large numbers after being driven from Myanmar, where they are not recognised as citizens. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim says the group includes Rohingyas and that he is responding to growing public hostility. In his telling, they have become a security burden, an economic burden and a source of resentment.

That is a long way from the image Anwar once cultivated. He previously presented himself as a defender of human rights and freedom, urged more support for the Rohingyas and, under his leadership, Malaysia refused to recognise Min Aung Hlaing’s regime. It was also one of the stronger voices in South East Asia pushing for a negotiated end to Myanmar’s civil war. Politics has a way of thinning out such convictions.

The shift did not happen in a vacuum. One factor is the increased strain on lower-income Malaysians since the Covid pandemic, which has fuelled resentment of the Rohingyas. Another is the febrile state of Malaysian politics since 2018, when a historic election ended more than 60 years of UMNO dominance and ushered in a revolving door of unstable coalitions. Anwar, once the perennial prime minister-in-waiting, finally reached office in 2022 only by making an uneasy pact with his former adversaries.

Public attitudes, meanwhile, have hardened. After the Myanmar military’s brutal campaign in August 2017 drove three quarters of a million Rohingyas from Rakhine State into Bangladesh, many later made the dangerous sea journey to Malaysia in search of safety and work. More than 200,000 are now believed to live there, most surviving on manual labour. For years they were tolerated, if not exactly embraced; then the pandemic arrived, social media filled with accusations, and demands for deportation became politically useful.

The same pattern has repeated this year. In May, an online complaint about animal waste after Eid al Adha triggered a viral campaign falsely accusing Rohingya leaders of demanding land and citizenship in Malaysia. A petition on Change.org calling for their expulsion gathered more than 400,000 signatures before it was taken down. Public sentiment, once stirred, is a convenient instrument for politicians who have run out of better ones.

There is also the small matter of where these people are supposed to go. Rohingyas are not allowed to travel inside Myanmar and are only permitted to live in Rakhine State. Much of that state is now under the control of the insurgent Arakan Army and under sustained bombardment by the Myanmar air force. The Arakan Army said two bombs killed 49 people at a market in Kyauktaw.

The only place that might conceivably receive returnees is Sittwe, the state capital, but it is besieged and isolated, and even there Rohingyas are confined to camps short of food and medicine. Rights groups also fear that men in the group could be forcibly conscripted into the army to fight in the civil war. Neither Malaysia nor Myanmar has explained how these obstacles are to be overcome, or how the repatriation is meant to fit humanitarian principles. For now, the ships are ready; the answers are not.

Written by Martina Kirchner martina.kirchner@alpineweekly.com