HUMAN rights group Amnesty International has urged the Government to immediately halt all forced deportations of people from Myanmar and ensure that they are given the opportunity to claim asylum.
Besides that, it said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) should be given access to all persons in Immigration Department detention centres, including women, children and men from Myanmar who are held there, while prospective asylum-seekers must be released from detention.
This follows recent news that Malaysia deported 150 Myanmar nationals this month, including former Navy officers seeking asylum, and plans to send back more despite the risk of arrest they face at home.
At least one former Navy officer and his wife, who was detained upon arrival in Yangon, were deported for failing to hold valid documents to reside in Malaysia, while the spouse and three other former officers had applied for UNHCR cards, Reuters reported on Wednesday (Oct 19).
In a statement, Amnesty International noted that since the beginning of October, over 150 Myanmar nationals have reportedly been deported from Malaysia, in cooperation with the Myanmar military authorities.
Given the grave human rights situation in Myanmar, it explained, which exacerbated since the military ousted an elected Government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi last year, those who are forcibly deported are at risk of persecution, torture, arbitrary detention and ill-treatment.
“Amnesty International is concerned that more people may be forcibly deported in the coming weeks and months,” it said.
“The Malaysian Government has continued to forcibly deport people to Myanmar, in spite of the insecure situation resulting from the coup in February 2021 as part of an agreement with the military authorities responsible for the takeover in the country,” it added.
Amnesty International, which has documented ongoing and serious human rights violations in Myanmar since the 2021 coup, recently published compelling evidence of torture at the hands of the Myanmar military to extract information as well as appalling conditions inside prisons and interrogation centres there.
“Regularly arrested and subject to torture”
The Myanmar military, its documentation showed, regularly arrests people for expressing dissent and subjects detainees to torture in detention, while in eastern Myanmar, war crimes and possible crimes against humanity were committed by the military.
More than 2,300 people have been killed since the coup and thousands arrested, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local civil society group monitoring human rights violations, while UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Tom Andrews said in September that conditions have gone from “bad to worse to horrific” since the military seized power.
On the other hand, efforts to restore peace, such as the ASEAN five-point consensus plan, have also failed, as caretaker foreign minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Abdullah recently acknowledged, Amnesty International added.
“Forced deportations of people from Myanmar without the option to seek asylum directly contradicts recent pronouncements by (Saifuddin), who has been critical of the military authorities,” the group noted.
Moving forward, Amnesty International said Malaysia, as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, should refrain from actions violating international human rights law, including the right to seek asylum, and uphold those rights and laws instead.
Amnesty International considers all individuals subjected to indefinite detention for immigration purposes to be victims of forced deportation if they are returned to Myanmar.
The organisation also considers forcibly deporting anyone from Myanmar under the current conditions to be refoulement (when a Government deports people to a country in which they would likely face human rights violations), which contravenes customary international law.
“People who are unable or unwilling to return to Myanmar should be allowed to remain safely in Malaysia without risk of refoulement and be able to regularise their stay either through extension of their work permits and other visas or access to asylum proceedings, and should be able to enjoy their rights.
“No one should be forcibly returned to Myanmar for any reason due to the current brutal conditions in the country,” it said. – Oct 22, 2022
Main photo credit: Getty Images
