Myanmar

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – The phone hasn’t stopped ringing in recent days. Raf*, a leader of refugees from Myanmar who are living in Malaysia, receives more than 100 calls a day, and they follow a common pattern.

“They are crying, asking me to do something,” Raf told Al Jazeera.

The Malaysian government on Tuesday deported nearly 1,500 refugees, part of its stated plan to send back at least 5,000 refugees as part of a deal with the military government of Myanmar. That move, from a country that had long taken in the refugees, has sparked fear among the tens of thousands of other refugees from Myanmar in the country, who have one question at the top of their minds: Who might be next?

The deportation was carried out during escalating raids on refugee communities by immigration officials, which have led to the detention of more than 50,000 refugees this year alone. Those working with refugees in Malaysia said the frequency of the raids has increased since June when Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the repatriation agreement with Myanmar.

“[We’ve seen] a sharp increase. Raids are happening every single day. There’s up to 50 raids or more happening every day,” said Heidy Quah, founder and executive director of the Malaysian nonprofit Refuge for the Refugees.

Minister of Home Affairs Saifuddin Nasution told local media that the government has conducted more than 9,700 such operations from the beginning of this year until September 17. That’s an average of 37 operations a day.

There are now more than 10,000 Myanmar nationals in Malaysia’s immigration depots, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs.

In all, Malaysia is home to more than 215,000 refugees, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Nearly 194,000 are from Myanmar. There are more than 126,000 Rohingya refugees in Malaysia, where they have been the target of widespread hate speech on social media in recent months. Apart from the Rohingya, the Myanmar refugees in Malaysia include nearly 16,000 from the Chin community and 33,000 from other Myanmar communities. The non-Myanmar refugees in Malaysia include small numbers of Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Afghans, Syrians, Sri Lankans, Palestinians and Iraqis.

The Myanmar refugee community in Malaysia has yet to identify any Rohingya among the first nearly 1,500 people deported on Tuesday, community leaders told Al Jazeera. Instead, many are from Myanmar’s other ethnic minorities, who are more likely to have valid national identification documents, community leaders said.

“The Rohingyas are a problem for deportation because Myanmar denies their citizenship,” Raf said. “So I don’t think that Myanmar will agree and accept all those Rohingyas.”

Myanmar officially treats the Rohingya as Bangladeshi immigrants despite the community’s long roots in Myanmar and their distinct ethnic identity. The Myanmar army has repeatedly cracked down on the Rohingya minority, including a wave of violence in 2017 that many rights groups have described as genocide. It set off a major refugee crisis when hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh, Malaysia, India and other neighbouring nations.

Myanmar community leaders also said the raids this year appear to have targeted locations highlighted in anti-refugee videos on social media in which content creators filmed refugee-populated areas, portraying them as hubs of chaos. These videos have been shared thousands of times on platforms such as Threads, TikTok and Facebook.

Al Jazeera contacted the Immigration Department to verify the link between the videos and raids but had not received a response at the time of publication. Accounts that had posted and shared antirefugee sentiment also did not respond to requests for comment.

Decline in resources

The increase in hostilities towards refugees in Malaysia coincides with a sharp decline in the capacity of local and international aid groups to support them, especially since the closure of the United States Agency for International Development in July 2025.

In Malaysia, this severely shrank resources for organisations helping refugees with basic needs, such as healthcare, Quah told Al Jazeera.

“Then slowly, United Nations organisations were being defunded, and even within the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia, they lost a lot of staff,” Quah said. The job cuts reflected global retrenchments by UNHCR last year.

The agency continues to struggle with a funding crisis, saying on Tuesday that it faces a $5.79bn funding gap and, as of July, has received 32 percent of the funds it needs this year.

In Malaysia, this has led to even less protection for refugees and higher rates of exploitation, Quah said.

“Even UNHCR cardholders are arrested and remanded for about 14 days [while the] cards are verified,” she said.

For instance, an asylum-seeking woman who had scheduled an appointment to meet UNHCR representatives this month was recently detained, and immigration authorities demanded a letter from the organisation to prove that she was an asylum seeker, Quah said.

Although UNHCR confirmed the woman was seeking asylum, she remains in detention, Quah said.

Ongoing violence in Myanmar

UNHCR and rights groups in Malaysia have urged the Malaysian government to stop the deportations as violence continues in Myanmar.

A day before Malaysia’s deportation of the refugees on Tuesday, an air strike by Myanmar’s military was reported to have killed at least 33 people in Rakhine state, the historical home of the Rohingya. The Arakan Army group said the victims included vendors, shoppers and pedestrians. In June, the UN said Myanmar’s military was responsible for more than 700 civilian deaths over a six-month election period that started in August last year.

The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) said that while Malaysia is not a party to the Refugee Convention of 1951, the principle of nonrefoulement has become part of customary international law and Malaysia, therefore, is bound to abide by it. The principle protects people from being returned to a place where they face a real risk of persecution, torture or other serious harm.

Particular attention should also be given to children, SUHAKAM said, highlighting that Tuesday’s deportation included 27 children, some reportedly as young as eight years old.

“No child should be returned to danger. Their safety, dignity and best interests must come first,” it said.

Myanmar community leaders in Malaysia told Al Jazeera the ships that departed on Tuesday will arrive in Yangon on Sunday.

“After that, we will [learn] whether they are allowed to leave the port safely [or are detained],” said one community leader who requested anonymity due to the increase in violence towards refugees in Malaysia.

Still, even those who are allowed to leave the port may need to spend months or years in Yangon because it is unsafe to travel across the country, the community leader said.

Call for independent access

Rights groups further criticised the Malaysian government’s framing of the deportations as “voluntary”, saying individuals should have sufficient information about conditions in their home countries before making such a decision.

“While authorities say the returns are voluntary, those returned had been held in immigration detention. This raises serious questions about whether decisions to return were genuinely free and informed,” UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Edem Wosornu said.

The Malaysian government said people were selected for deportation based on a list of names shared by the Myanmar government in an official diplomatic note.

“Such [a] ‘voluntary’ decision must be determined by an independent authority, such as the UNHCR, and not by the Immigration Department,” SUHAKAM said .

UNHCR told Al Jazeera that it was not involved in the latest return process and did not have access to the individuals concerned. “[We were,] therefore, not in a position to independently ascertain the voluntariness of their decisions to return,” it said.

“We continue to encourage the government to ensure that return processes include individual assessments, access to protection procedures and safeguards to ensure that any decision to return is free, informed and genuinely voluntary,” it said.

Malaysia registering refugees

The deportations come at a time when Malaysia is simultaneously positioning itself as welcoming to refugees and their needs.

In 2015, the Malaysian government launched a Refugee Registration Document (DPP) programme. On paper, it is supposed to help register refugees, giving them official documentation.

Raf welcomed the DPP as long as the registration and documentation of refugees in Malaysia leads to access to work, education and healthcare.

“If these three things are provided, I think that’s a good solution for temporary refugees staying here.”

But the Malaysian branches of Amnesty International and Asylum Access said the latest deportations raise profound concerns about the purpose of the DPP. The programme should not be used to fast-track unlawful deportations, the groups said in a joint statement.

*Name changed to protect the individual’s identity

The deaths appear to be the first at the hands of Somali pirates in more than a decade.

Pirates have killed five crew members on board a Palau-flagged oil tanker off the coast of Somalia before security forces rescued the ship, according to Somali authorities.

The deaths on the tanker, the MT Honour 25, were announced on Tuesday.

They appear to be the first deaths at ⁠the hands of Somali pirates in more than a decade and come amid a resurgence of Somali piracy that experts have attributed in part to the effects of the United States and Israel’s war on Iran.

The MT Honour 25, which authorities said was carrying 18,500 barrels of oil, was seized by pirates off Somalia on April 21.

The Information Ministry of Puntland, a semiautonomous region of Somalia, said in a statement that a rescue mission had freed the ship and captured 16 suspected pirates.

“Before the operation began, the pirates on board the ship killed five of the crew,” the statement said. “Among those killed were three from Pakistan, one from Myanmar and one from India.”

Four other crew members, three Pakistanis and one Indian, were injured, it said.

In a post on social media, the Puntland Maritime Police Force said the vessel was “safe” and under the government’s control. It said efforts were continuing to find others involved in the hijacking.

The rescue follows another operation last week in which the maritime police freed the Sibu 1, a tanker sanctioned by the US that Somali pirates had hijacked in August.

But 28 of the 41 pirates arrested in that operation later escaped while being transferred to jail, and several Puntland security officials accused local police of complicity.

At least 15 attacks have been reported off Somalia since April, according to officials.

A previous wave of piracy, from 2008 to 2014, disrupted one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, cost the global economy billions of dollars and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments.

Nearly half a million people are displaced in Rakhine as a result of the conflict between the military and rebel groups.

An air strike carried out by Myanmar’s military has killed at least 33 people in territory controlled by rebel factions.

The attack near a market in the north of the Rakhine state in the west of the country on Monday also wounded 36 people, rescue and rebel group officials reported. The strikes are the latest in a series of assaults against pro-democracy and ethnic armed groups by the military government, which took power in a coup in 2021, sparking armed opposition.

The Arakan army said a fighter jet dropped two bombs near a local market in the town of Kyauktaw at noon local time (0530 GMT), killing 33 people, including vendors, shoppers, and pedestrians. It said the death toll “may continue to increase”.

Wai Hun Aung, a senior rescue official in Rakhine, confirmed the details to the Associated Press news agency. He said the market was the region’s main wholesale centre, drawing traders and shoppers from across the state.

“This is one of the most severe airstrikes in Rakhine,” he said. Photos and videos posted on social media showed buildings on fire, damaged vehicles and parts of a nearby bridge destroyed.

Myanmar’s military did not immediately comment, but it has previously said it strikes only legitimate military targets and accused resistance groups of “terrorism”.

Myanmar has been gripped by ⁠conflict since the elected ⁠government led by Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted in the 2021 coup. A nationwide resistance movement has since evolved into a civil war between the ‌military government and an array of armed ethnic and pro-democracy groups.

President Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s former military government chief, was elected by ‌a military-backed Parliament in April, formalising his grip on power after five years of army rule.

The Arakan army is a well-trained and well-armed military group seeking autonomy for Rakhine’s ethnic minority. It launched an offensive in November 2023 and has since captured strategically important military headquarters and 14 of the state’s 17 townships.

The military has imposed severe restrictions on trade routes to Rakhine since the fighting there intensified, worsening food shortages.

In December, a military airstrike on a hospital in Rakhine’s Mrauk U township killed at least 33 people and wounded 70 others.

Nearly half a million people are displaced in Rakhine as a result of the conflict, according to United Nations data. The UN added in August that the human rights situation in Myanmar has plummeted “to a new low”, citing “brutal abuse” against the Rohingya minority and the devastating impact of illicit economic activity, including illegal mining for rare earth minerals.

Rebel groups and Myanmar’s military are now both using drones in the protracted conflict, which has killed more than 100,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project.

US judges affirm migrants must have opportunities to voice safety concerns before deportation to unfamiliar nations.

A US federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration’s policy of rapidly deporting migrants to countries other than their own – a ruling that could next go before the Supreme Court.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston largely upheld a February decision that found the Department of Homeland Security’s so-called third-country removal policy unlawful.

The case stems from a class-action lawsuit testing what due process migrants are owed before being sent to nations with which they have no ties.

Writing for the panel, US Circuit Judge Seth Aframe said migrants must be given a “meaningful” chance to raise safety concerns before removal, rejecting the Trump administration’s narrower reading of the law.

The court did overturn part of the ruling on procedural grounds, concerning whether officials must first try deporting migrants to countries they have ties to.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the decision confirmed that “due process and the protections Congress enacted against persecution and torture cannot be circumvented by putting someone on a plane to a country that was never part of their removal proceedings”.

The DHS did not immediately comment. The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling.

Under Trump, the US has struck agreements allowing it to send more than 25,000 migrants to at least 29 third countries, most often Mexico, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, a tracker run by the rights groups Refugees International and Human Rights First.

The policy, adopted in March 2025, allowed removals with only minimal notice if officials had diplomatic assurances against persecution.

The controversial programme has reached the Supreme Court twice.

In 2025, the justices cleared the way for eight men, including nationals of Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam, to be deported to South Sudan, a country the US State Department advises against visiting because of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict”.

The DHS called the removals “a win”, while rights groups said they flouted basic protections.

The Trump administration’s immigration agenda has faced a string of setbacks this month.

A federal judge blocked planned caps on student and journalist visas, calling the government’s justification “exceptionally weak”, while a coalition of 22 states and Washington, DC, sued to stop a separate rule that would let officials deny green cards to immigrants who lawfully use public benefits.

YANGON: Myanmar’s military-backed government said Sunday their UN ambassador — loyal to ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi — is occupying the office illegitimately, as the organisation prepares to weigh his replacement.

Myanmar has been embroiled in civil war since a military coup in 2021 ousted the elected government of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, ending the country’s decade-long experiment with democracy.

The United Nations formed a credentials committee this month to decide whether to accept Naypyidaw’s candidate for UN ambassador or stick with Kyaw Moe Tun, who has rejected the coup and for more than five years ignored the government’s claims that he no longer represents Myanmar.

Myanmar’s foreign ministry said Kyaw Moe Tun was “dismissed from civil service” effective February 27, 2021 for not complying with state orders, committing treason and colluding with “terrorist organisations”, according to a statement published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

The day before his dismissal, he made an emotional plea during an address at the UN General Assembly for the “strongest possible action” against the military coup.

The ambassador, who was appointed by Suu Kyi’s government, broke with his country’s rulers weeks after their putsch.

Leaders sanctioned

The ministry also accused Kyaw Moe Tun of misusing state funds and property, including the premises of the UN Permanent Mission of Myanmar in New York, and working with the exiled opposition “National Unity Government” (NUG), which the government has branded a terrorist group.

“Kyaw Moe Tun’s continued representation of Myanmar at the United Nations does not constitute formal recognition of his legitimacy,” the ministry said.

“Rather, his continued status is merely a temporary arrangement, with the Credentials Committee’s decision deferred annually.”

The members of the UN committee — who will weigh whether to replace Kyaw Moe Tun — include the Bahamas, Belgium, Benin, China, Jamaica, Russia, Uganda, the United States and Vanuatu.

While China and Russia are cosy allies of the Myanmar government, supplying military arms, jets and diplomatic cover, the United States has sanctioned dozens of its leaders, including former junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.

The committee generally announces its annual credentials decisions around November.

After the military snatched power, Myanmar authorities were persona non grata in many foreign capitals, but Min Aung Hlaing is making a diplomatic drive for recognition since retiring as armed forces chief and taking over as civilian president in April.

Since 2021, the civil war between the military and various pro-democracy fighters and ethnic minority armed groups has killed more than 100,000 people on all sides, according to monitor ACLED.