‘Sending them to their deaths’: Malaysia’s deal with the devil

What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.Kuala Lumpur: When we met in the Malaysian capital on Monday, Mahi Ramakrishnan, a forced-migration expert trying to stop her country from deporting Myanmar refugees and migrants, was fuming into her coffee.“I told the Malaysian Home Ministry that we are sending them to their deaths, and [the person] was like, ‘Oh no, no, no! Don’t say things like that’. I’m like, ‘What else is there to say?’ ” Ramakrishnan told me.Forced-migration expert Mahi Ramakrishnan is trying to stop Malaysia deporting Myanmar refugees and migrants.Zach HopeBut at least on Monday there still seemed to be time.Key civil society organisations believed a problem with one of the Myanmar regime’s warships to be used as transport meant plans to ship people back to war – and possible prison or torture – on Tuesday had been delayed.Whether a ruse or mistake, the information turned out to be incorrect, and by Tuesday morning the “phase one” group consisting of 1476 people had been bussed to Malaysia’s Lumut Naval Base and loaded onto Myanmar navy vessels, where they waited to push out for the homelands that many of them had risked their lives to flee.“I was enraged and absolutely heartbroken,” Ramakrishnan told me when I spoke to her again on Wednesday. “The prime minister [Anwar Ibrahim] keeps saying the government will discuss for a safe return, but what is he talking about when the [Myanmar] military is continuing its airstrikes?”As if mocking the people and organisations pleading with the Malaysian prime minister not to send the group home, the Myanmar regime chose Monday for an airstrike on a market and a bridge in Rakhine state that may have killed 50 civilians and injured 58 more.Images shared to Telegram by the Arakan Army, one of the ethnic armies fighting the regime, showed bodies so damaged it was impossible to tell whether they were children or adults, men or women.More than 100,000 people may have been killed in the Myanmar civil war since a military coup ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing is being incorporated into the mainstream by Malaysia and other South-East Asian nations.APThe panicked regime of coup leader Min Aung Hlaing has become increasingly barbaric following territorial losses from late 2023, showing no qualms in sending its Russian- and Chinese-made jets to blow up schools, hospitals and wedding parties.Still, the politically vulnerable Anwar, playing to Malaysia’s rising anti-migrant sentiment ahead of general elections, announced on September 16 that he had invited Min Aung Hlaing for a state visit.Myanmar watchers and human rights organisations were aghast that democratic and proud Malaysia would, like Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, begin incorporating Myanmar’s “president” into the mainstream despite him showing no signs of bringing his nation to peace. A geopolitical shrug of the shoulders.In exchange for Malaysia’s friendship, Myanmar agreed to take back refugees.The slated number is 5000, but rights organisations fear this is only the thin edge of the wedge. Malaysia holds hundreds of thousands of Myanmar migrants, many of whom have fled, on rickety boats, from regime-razed villages, persecution and forced military conscription after the 2021 coup. Thousands have died at sea.The cohort of Rohingya Muslims alone in Malaysia may total more than 200,000 people, but it is impossible to know the precise breakdown of ethnicities because many migrants – grappling with illiteracy, poverty, health problems and no access to transport – can’t make it to Kuala Lumpur to register with the understaffed and overwhelmed local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Registration is supposed to prevent arrests in ICE-like raids, but it does not allow refugees to work legally or send their children to state schools.Civil society organisations say the Malaysian government and Myanmar regime have refused to supply a list of people being returned, or reveal the criteria used in their selection and whether they are economic migrants or refugees.‘Many people say they are volunteers going back, but as a community leader, I do not believe this. I know my people.’James Bawi Thang Bik, chairman of the Alliance of Chin Refugees, in Malaysia.And Malaysia’s claim that all in the group are returning voluntarily is dubious, to say the least.Christian Chins, the second-largest Myanmar ethnic group in Malaysia behind the Rohingya, with 80,000 migrants, are probably among the number, says James Bawi Thang Bik, the chairman of the Alliance of Chin Refugees.“People have been arrested in immigration raids … while they’re in a house, on the streets and at workplaces,” he tells me. “Many people say they are volunteers going back, but as a community leader, I do not believe this. I know my people.”Ramakrishnan says there may be volunteers among the 5000 cohort, but this must be taken in context.James Bawi Thang Bik, chairman of the Alliance of Chin Refugees, in Malaysia.Zach Hope“They’re treated like sub-human beings [in Malaysia],” she says. “The refugees are not allowed to work. They’re doing gig jobs, and they are not being paid because the employers know that they can get away with it.“They can’t have access to structured education for their kids, and there’s no access to affordable healthcare … There are some people who think ‘I’d rather just go because the situation on the ground is so difficult.’”Even long before the coup, the Rohingya in particular had been facing well-publicised and extreme persecution at the hands of the Myanmar military (and Rakhine Buddhists). An International Court of Justice decision about whether Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017 is imminent.From her sources, Ramakrishnan does not believe any Rohingya are among the first 1476 being sent home, but she fears they are among the broader 5000 (even though the Myanmar military regime does not recognise them as citizens).The hypocrisy of Malaysia’s full-throated support for the Muslims of Palestine versus the hateful railing against Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar has not been lost on anyone paying attention, she says.Malaysia’s deputy inspector-general of police in June went as far as to call the Rohingya a “cancer”; never mind that only 89 of them have been convicted of criminal offences in Malaysia since 2024, as reported by The Diplomat.In a self-congratulatory post to X on Tuesday evening, Malaysia’s Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail called the outgoing migrants “foreign fugitives”.“This longstanding imbalance has become a significant financial burden on the nation, triggering serious social crises and creating real security threats to the people of Malaysia,” he wrote.Ramakrishnan has observed an upsurge in online hate speech against the Rohingya in the past year, some of it fuelled by what appear to be bots. This has been mirrored in the physical world to the extent that some refugees are “terrified to even take a bike or walk to buy food because of the increase in vigilante behaviour amongst Malaysians”, says Ramakrishnan.It was unclear at the time of writing whether the ships had actually departed, but a last-minute court application for a stay (why so last minute is difficult to know) failed on Tuesday because the judge wanted to hear from both sides.While it’s seemingly too late for the 1476 on the boats, the stay application will continue next week to protect the more than 3500 other people scheduled to be repatriated in coming phases.The Australian government has not made a public statement on its own channels. A spokesman, however, told this masthead that it has “consistently made clear that conditions in Myanmar do not support the safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return of displaced people, including Rohingya.”Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.From our partners