AFP — Myanmar has agreed to take back 5,000 Rohingya from Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur announced on Wednesday (29), in a rare repatriation push declared just days after Malaysian authorities detained dozens of refugees.
Malaysia is home to more than 215,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with the United Nations refugee agency, including more than 126,000 members of the persecuted Rohingya minority from Myanmar, making them the country's largest refugee community.
"People ask why we don't send them back. Send them where? Myanmar had previously refused to accept these people," Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said during a visit to a city east of the capital, as reported by local media.
"But now, through our good relations with Myanmar, they have agreed to take back 5,000 people from Malaysia," multiple outlets reported, quoting Anwar.
The Malaysian leader's remarks came just days after Malaysian authorities detained more than 100 Rohingya refugees outside the premises of the UN refugee agency in Kuala Lumpur.
A Rohingya human rights group in Malaysia said the group had sought shelter after they were threatened with eviction from informal accommodation in the northern state of Penang.
Officials later confirmed that those detained held valid documents issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Bernama news agency reported.
A senior police official said on Wednesday that the group had been released and dispersed to various locations across Malaysia after a final round of verification.
Despite hosting one of Southeast Asia's largest refugee populations, Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not formally recognise refugee status.
AFP fact-checking has found that Rohingya refugees in Malaysia have been targeted by online disinformation campaigns which human rights activists say are stoking xenophobia and intimidation.
Large numbers of Rohingya, who are predominantly Muslim, fled Myanmar during a brutal military crackdown in 2017.
That operation, which saw Rohingya villages burned and civilians killed, became the subject of a genocide case at the United Nations' highest court in The Hague.
Myanmar's leaders had previously maintained that the Rohingya are descendants of migrants from Bangladesh, and that the 2017 crackdown was directed at armed insurgent groups.
