Awaiting refugee status, Myanmar nationals in Malaysia struggle, risk deportation

By Kiana Duncan for RFA2024.11.04

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Myanmar citizens who have fled to Malaysia to escape their country’s turmoil and repression have been in limbo for years, waiting to be granted refugee status, which would ensure at least basic rights, while the threat of deportation hangs over them.

“It gives me nightmares, that I can’t stay any longer in Malaysia,” said an ethnic Kachin human rights activist from Myanmar who asked to be identified as just Brang, speaking of the prospect of deportation from Malaysia where he has been staying since last year.

Like other countries in the region, Malaysia has seen a surge of people arriving from Myanmar fleeing war, conscription and a crumbling economy, especially since an early 2021 coup ended a decade of tentative reform and ushered in the return of repressive military rule.

Many, but by no means all, of the people from Myanmar arriving in Malaysia are members of the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority, hoping for refuge in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

But Malaysia has not been so welcoming for some.

Two years ago, Malaysia came under severe criticism from human rights groups who said authorities deported about 2,000 people back to Myanmar, including several defectors from the military who were detained upon arrival back home.

A government minister at the time said human rights groups should not interfere.

According to the Coalition of Burma Ethnics Malaysia, an aid group helping Myanmar nationals, deportations have continued with dire consequences. In July, at least one deported community leader was detained upon arrival in Yangon and later killed, the group said. In September, about 118 people were deported, the majority of whom were arrested on arrival, it said.

Malaysia’s Immigration Department did not answer telephone calls or respond to emails seeking comment on its policy but Myanmar migrants say they live under the fear of being rounded up and sent home.

“I’m afraid of deportation because of my status and because my work before was related to politics,” said Brang, who came to Malaysia in the hope of finding resettlement in a third country faster than in Thailand, where he had been staying.

“If I were deported, I don’t know what would happen.”

‘A lot of worries’

The Malaysian office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, did not respond to telephone calls and emails seeking comment on the plight of Myanmar citizens in Malaysia.

As of September, UNHCR Malaysia said in a release it had registered more than 190,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, all but 20,000 of them from Myanmar.

Malaysia, however, is not a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which outlines the legal protection, rights and assistance a refugee is entitled to receive, and does not recognize the status of refugee.

Despite that, the UNHCR office does confer refugee status, which can bring benefits such as cheaper medical assistance and at least some protection from arrest and deportation while migrants await resettlement, aid groups say.

But refugee status can take years to come through.

Than Win ran out of luck six months ago when, after living in Malaysia for eight years, he broke his leg in a motorbike accident coming home from his job picking jackfruit.

The 45-year-old and his wife applied to the UNHCR for refugee status in 2019 but they have not heard back.

Without refugee status, the public hospital he was taken to refused to operate on his broken leg because he couldn’t afford to pay, he said. Instead, staff wrapped his leg in bandages and sent him home without medication.

“It still hurts. I can’t walk, I can’t stand up,” Than Win said, pointing to crutches he uses to get around.

Than Win fled from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state after his brother was arrested in 2016 by the military for fighting in the insurgent Arakan Army. Fearing he too would also be arrested, he traveled first to Thailand and then on to Malaysia.

“Because I’m injured, I can’t work, I can’t do anything. I have a lot of worries and I’m really depressed,” he said, adding his family depends on an older brother who is also in Malaysia for support.

Trying to help

A welfare group set up in Malaysia by migrants from Rakhine state, the Center for Arakan Refugees, which is trying to help Than Win, said it had documented 200,000 people who arrived from Myanmar since the early 2021 coup.

Of those, the center said it had helped 30,000 apply for refugee status but only about 200 had received it.

The center said that in the last two months, it received about 120 requests for emergency help from Myanmar citizens waiting for refugee status, the majority involving medical assistance after accidents.

“Many of them have broken legs and hands,” said Abdul Rahman, a committee member of the Center for Arakan Refugees.

“Tuberculosis and HIV patients, other accidents and emergency patients request help from our office … but especially for treatment, to be admitted to the hospital, we don’t have much money.”

Not having refugee status can also leave people vulnerable to pressure from authorities who impose on-the-spot fines, said the leader of another refugee group, who declined to be identified.

“Burmese people are mainly targeted by local authorities … especially the Rohingya,” he said.

“Police stop refugees and asylum-seekers daily, especially non-registered ones.”

Than Win dreams of taking his wife and 10-month-old son to a Western country for resettlement but says progress towards that will be impossible without first securing refugee status.

“I want to be recognized as a refugee by the UNHCR, if possible. If I am, I can serve my family,” Than Win said.

Editing by RFA Staff