MalayMail/AFP-Sept 25
As a Rohingya exile who abandoned his life in Malaysia to return to Myanmar, Ismail’s bleak prospects may portend what awaits others caught in Kuala Lumpur’s migrant crackdown.
Weeks ago, the 25-year-old was eking out a living at a Malaysia fish market, one of legions of the Muslim minority group who left Myanmar to escape violence some monitors say amounted to genocide. But a wave of anti-Rohingya sentiment, migrant arrests and a government plan to repatriate Myanmar nationals drove Ismail back, even though the nation he fled still denies him full citizenship. “People without a country like us, we have nowhere to come back (to),” said Ismail, using a pseudonym for security reasons like other Rohingya in this story. He subsists jobless on the charity of family in Yangon, carrying ID branding him a second-class citizen and cowering from the security forces who spearheaded the crackdown on his people. “We are the most discriminated people,” said Ismail, “the people from nowhere”. Nearly 1,500 Myanmar migrants are due to be sent home from Malaysia next week, the first of 5,000 that Kuala Lumpur says agreed to “voluntary” repatriation from detention centers. The group makes up two-thirds of the 190,000 Myanmar refugees and asylum seekers in the country, according to the United Nations. The Rohingya left Myanmar en masse starting in 2017 when a crackdown of mass killing, rape and arson began in western Rakhine state. Rights groups say it was a military-led campaign of ethnic cleansing, a claim the armed forces deny. The majority of Rohingya — 1.2 million—now live over the Bangladesh border in overcrowded camps, while Malaysia is the second-largest host nation. Despite Malaysia being a Muslim-majority country, the Rohingya there are facing pressure, including from an online campaign that rights advocates say is fueling xenophobia and intimidation.
For years, efforts to repatriate Rohingya to Myanmar have stalled over the ethics of returning them to a country where conditions have only worsened since a 2021 coup that triggered civil war. Some fear Malaysia’s return scheme will erode existing protections. Read more at:
