"Malaysia has become the preferred destination for a number of threatened minority groups from Myanmar, including the Rohingya, the Chin, and the Kachin," says Phil Robertson from Human Rights Watch. "Those communities and their networks in Malaysia help to protect new arrivals, and support efforts to get refugee status and protection from UNHCR."
Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN Convention and Protocol on Refugees. It also does not recognise the refugee status given to asylum seekers assessed by the UN Refugee Agency as being at risk if returned to their own country.
Yet Malaysia is home to 185,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers, and many more who are not registered - most of them from Myanmar. It hosts 100,000 Muslim Rohingyas, who fled repression in Myanmar and overcrowded camps in Bangladesh.
In the past Malaysia largely left refugees and asylum seekers alone. But in the past six months, the country has deported around 2,000 Burmese asylum seekers, according to Human Rights Watch, without any assessment of what risks they might face on their return to Myanmar. Malaysia's relaxed attitude towards refugees changed at the height of the Covid pandemic, when the public feared that the large migrant communities would spread the disease. This has made mass deportations a popular move in the weeks leading up to the general election scheduled for mid-November.
"It's a Jekyll and Hyde policy," Mr Robertson says. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working hard to demand the junta respect human rights and end the violence, while the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Immigration Department are doing deals with the Myanmar embassy to send refugees back."
Why is Malaysia deporting Myanmar asylum seekers? - BBC News
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