YANGON: Myanmar has repatriated nearly 10,000 migrants from Malaysia this year, state media said on Monday, a day after a flotilla returning almost 1,500 of its citizens docked in the country. Myanmar revealed on Monday that a parallel and larger repatriation push has also been taking place by plane. Between January and August this year, "8,041 citizens were repatriated by air", state newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar said. The total number of migrants Myanmar has said returned by plane and ship this year is 9,517.
Malaysia insists returnees under its scheme agreed to voluntary repatriation from detention centres, where Myanmar says they had "faced difficulties" after serving sentences for immigration offences. Rights monitors have raised concerns that members of the Rohingya minority may be sent back to Myanmar, where they have faced violent persecution, but Malaysia has not commented on the ethnicities of returnees.
The United Nations has sharply criticised Malaysia's push to return migrants to Myanmar under an opaque scheme it says cannot guarantee safe homecomings to the war-torn nation. — AFP
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