Portugal Colonial - Myanmar migrants returned to war-torn nation from Malaysia

Three ships carrying Myanmar migrants had all docked at the Myanmar Navy base in Thanlyin just before 7:30 am (0100 GMT), said the naval official who AFP has kept anonymous as he was not authorised to speak to media.

Hundreds of families were gathered at dawn to collect their relatives outside the base, where cars, taxis and buses were parked in ranks preparing to take them away, AFP journalists saw.

Kyaw Myint, 55, told AFP he was there to collect three grandchildren who had been in Malaysian detention for one and a half years, and who he has not seen in six years.

"Since they arrived in prison we lost contact with them," he said.

Now Kyaw Myint is worried about them being conscripted -- "not only by the military but also by ethnic armed groups", he added.

There are also concerns members of the persecuted Rohingya are among the returned group, after Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the repatriations against a backdrop of anti-Rohingya sentiment, but this has not been confirmed.

The three Myanmar Navy ships left Malaysia on Tuesday carrying 1,476 migrants, according to the Myanmar government -- the first of 5,000 that Anwar says Myanmar agreed to take back.

But the United Nations (UN) warns conditions in Myanmar, which has been consumed by civil war since a 2021 military coup, mean safe homecomings cannot be guaranteed as required under international law.

"We have no idea how his life will be back in Myanmar," said the 25-year-old sister of one migrant, who told his family he expected to be sent aboard the ships.

"Our main concern is his arrival won't be safe," she told AFP from Malaysia, requesting anonymity for security reasons after losing contact with her brother before the vessels set sail.

The arrivals were due to include 27 children and 79 women, Malaysian media said, the remaining 1,370 adult men.

Rohingya make up the majority of Myanmar refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, but Kuala Lumpur has not responded to an AFP query about the number onboard.

- Free and informed -

Anwar announced the repatriations in July, just days after the detention of more than 100 Rohingya asylum seekers in Kuala Lumpur amid rising xenophobia against refugees, particularly the Rohingyas in Malaysia.

News of the returns sparked widespread concern, as members of the ethnic group fled Myanmar en masse following a military crackdown starting in 2017, which rights experts say amounted to genocide.

Malaysia insists all returnees agreed to voluntary repatriation from detention centres, where Myanmar says they had completed sentences for immigration offences.

But monitor organisations such as Fortify Rights report dire conditions in the facilities.

The UN refugee agency said this past week its staff were not allowed to meet returnees to confirm whether migrants' decisions "were genuinely free and informed".

Myanmar state television has broadcast footage of the migrants on the journey home, being led in aerobics classes on a ship deck and wearing T-shirts saying: "Happy voyage back to motherland".

- 'No time to return' -

Malaysia is already moving ahead with plans to return a second group of more than 3,500 migrants.

Migrants have "imposed a significant financial burden on the nation, triggered serious social crises, and created tangible security threats for the Malaysian people", the home ministry has said.

Myanmar leader Min Aung Hlaing, the coup leader who was installed as civilian president this April, is expected to soon visit Malaysia to discuss the scheme.

Myanmar last month pledged returns will be "safe and dignified".

But Yap Lay Sheng, a senior human rights specialist with Fortify Rights, told AFP: "There's no telling how the regime would treat returnees."

Myanmar is also riven by violence, with 50 killed late last month in a military airstrike on a marketplace in western Rakine state.

The civil war has so far killed more than 100,000 people, according to monitor ACLED.

"This is no time to return anyone forcibly to a country plagued by egregious human rights violations and abuses," UN rights chief Volker Turk said Tuesday.

F.Carias--PC