Malaysia is preparing to forcibly return roughly 5,000 Myanmar nationals, including ethnic Rohingya, to Myanmar, Human Rights Watch reported on August 3 [1]. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim set the number himself. On July 29, he said that "Myanmar authorities had agreed to take back 5,000 ethnic Rohingya" [1].
The scale of Malaysia's Myanmar population puts that figure in context. More than 215,000 refugees and asylum seekers are registered with UNHCR in the country, and about 194,000 of them are from Myanmar. Of those, 126,000 are ethnic Rohingya [1]. The 5,000 slated for return are a slice cut from the largest refugee community the country hosts, not a handful of isolated cases.
Many are already in state custody. As of June 30, 2026, Malaysia held 22,166 people in its immigration detention centers, roughly half of them from Myanmar [1]. HRW says the return plan comes amid surging immigration raids and xenophobic rhetoric aimed at refugees.
Human Rights Watch frames the danger in terms of who these people are and what they left. "Malaysia has for many years hosted refugees from Myanmar who have fled unending oppression and atrocities by the Myanmar military," said Bryony Lau, the group's deputy Asia director [1]. The military she describes is the same one that took power in a 2021 coup, then arbitrarily arrested tens of thousands of people, with thousands dying in custody, according to HRW [1].
The Rohingya have a longer and worse history with that military still. They have fled successive waves of what HRW describes as genocide, crimes against humanity, and apartheid carried out by Myanmar's forces [1]. Sending them back, the group argues, is not returning people to a home that has stabilized; it is delivering survivors to the government responsible for the atrocities they escaped.
