Malaysia working with Myanmar junta’s navy to forcibly return detainees
(KUALA LUMPUR, September 2, 2026)—The Malaysian government should halt plans to forcibly return approximately 1,500 Myanmar nationals on September 29, 2026, Fortify Rights said today. Returning refugees to Myanmar would risk exposing them to torture, persecution, armed conflict, forced recruitment, and other serious rights violations.
“Malaysia should not forcibly send anyone back to a country where they face persecution, torture, and serious harm,” said Yap Lay Sheng, Senior Human Rights Specialist at Fortify Rights. “The government should instead formally recognize their refugee status and guarantee refugees’ lawful stay and basic rights in the country.”
On August 27, 2026, Malaysia’s Home Ministry announced that it had finalized the first phase of a program to return 5,000 Myanmar detainees from its immigration detention centers. The first 1,476 people are scheduled to depart Malaysia on September 29 aboard two Myanmar Navy warships and a hospital ship.
This follows a July 23 announcement by the deputy foreign minister, who told Parliament that the planned returns were intended to ease what he described as the burden on Malaysia. “[Malaysia is] not a signatory to the [1951 Refugee] Convention,” he said, “and the public has now begun to feel burdened by issues relating to the management of the Rohingya community.” Malaysia has seen a sharp rise in public anti-Rohingya sentiment and incitement in recent months.
Separately, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim also declared that Myanmar’s military junta had agreed to accept 5,000 detainees from Malaysia, citing the two governments’ “good bilateral relations,” in an election campaign speech on July 29.
In the most recent announcement, the Home Ministry disclosed that 4,008 people, primarily ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar, would be processed through the government’s Dokumen Pendaftaran Pelarian (DPP, or Refugee Registration Document) procedures. At the same time, a separate group of 5,000 detainees would undergo “voluntary repatriation” without undergoing the DPP process. The ministry has not disclosed the ethnicities of the first 1,476 people of this group of 5,000 who are being expelled.
The government first announced the DPP in July 2025 and began implementing it in the detention center in January 2026. The government has promised that DPP-registered refugees will be able to remain and have lawful access to education, work rights, and other basic services.
However, the DPP program has experienced a slow, limited rollout. Although the government had collected data from 4,010 detainees under the first phase of the DPP, it had only formally recognized 78 Rohingya as refugees under the program as of June 2026, according to a parliamentary reply by the Home Minister. The authorities have said that processing the nearly 220,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) could continue until 2029. At the same time, the Home Ministry has directed UNHCR Malaysia to stop its own parallel refugee registration in July this year.
The fact that the 5,000 detainees scheduled for forced return to Myanmar will not undergo the DPP process raises a serious risk that people are being returned without any meaningful assessment of their refugee claims or the harm they will face upon return.
Under international law, Malaysia has a legal obligation to prevent forced returns or refoulement. The principle of non-refoulement is considered customary international law and binding on all states. Under this principle, states are prohibited from returning refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they may face persecution, torture, or serious harm. States are obligated to assess the risks of torture, persecution, or other serious human rights violations before facilitating any transfer of a person to another country. This duty exists regardless of whether the person has expressed a protection concern or requested protection from the state.
The UNHCR Malaysia has “urge[d] that careful consideration be given to the protection needs of all those concerned before they are returned to Myanmar, and stands ready to engage with relevant authorities on protection safeguards.”
Since the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar, Fortify Rights has also documented how the junta’s widespread war crimes and crimes against humanity, including airstrikes, ground attacks, arbitrary detention, and the killing of civilians, occur with impunity. In addition, the Rohingya continue to face the effects of an ongoing genocide, including denial of citizenship, restrictions on movement, and the threat of forced conscription. At the same time, the opposition Arakan Army has subjected Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in Rakhine State to forced labor, as well as abductions, torture, killings, and beheadings, including massacres of Rohingya civilians, in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships.
“Returning anyone to Myanmar would expose Rohingya and members of other ethnic groups to a real risk of persecution, torture, armed conflict, forced recruitment, and other serious human rights violations,” said Yap Lay Sheng. “The government’s cavalier disregard for refugee lives is unacceptable and a violation of its international obligations.”
Photo Credit: ©Myanmar UMS King Sin Phyu Shin, 2018