‘Better to Kill Us’: Fear Over Malaysia’s Plan to Send Back Myanmar Migrants

 NYT

By Zunaira Saieed

Reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Aug. 28, 2026, 5:04 a.m. ET

Two years ago, Muhiduzamal fled religious persecution and civil war in his native Myanmar, traversing land and sea for four months before arriving in Malaysia. As at home, he found work in a paddy field, and moved into a traditional Malay home, a wooden structure on stilts.

He tried to register as a refugee with a United Nations agency in Malaysia, and was waiting for an appointment. But without that status, Malaysia considered Mr. Muhiduzamal, 35, who is a Rohingya Muslim and uses only one name, to be in the country illegally. In June, he was arrested and sent to a detention center, his brother said.

Malaysia has more than 10,000 undocumented migrants from Myanmar in custody. Last month, it announced plans to send about half of them back home. The migrants, their families and rights groups say that they are worried that once the migrants are back in Myanmar, the military government there will conscript them — men and women — and force them into battle. Rohingya fear the worst: They are stateless in their own country and have suffered what the United Nations and the United States have determined was a genocide conducted by the Myanmar military.

“It is better to kill us in Malaysia rather than send us back to Myanmar,” said Mohammad, 25, who has refugee status and lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, but asked to be identified only by part of his name while discussing his brother’s case.

“My brother will be killed if he is sent back, as the junta in Myanmar will send him to the frontline to fight.”

Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of people from Myanmar have sought refuge in Malaysia in the hope of escaping ethnic cleansing and a brutal junta. Tens of thousands have refugee status in Malaysia but they still face intensifying discrimination. Hundreds of undocumented migrants have died in detention.