No Negotiation with War Criminals: Reject the Junta, Solidarity with Myanmar!

On Thursday, 24 September, GEGAR, Artivist Network, Beyond Borders, AKSI, and refugee community organisations staged a protest and memorandum handover in front of the Ministry of Home Affairs, in response to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's plans to invite Min Aung Hlaing to Malaysia and the mass deportations of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

In condemnation of the fascist junta's impending visit, we read testimonies, poems, and speeches from grassroots movements and refugee organisations, from Rohingya Rights Response to Blood Money Campaign Myanmar.

The state-forced return of 1,476 refugees to Myanmar is already scheduled for the September 29, with the assistance of two Myanmar Navy warships. Not only are 200,000 Rohingya at grave risk of deportation, refugees scheduled for deportation also include members of Myanmar's revolution and civil disobedience movement, where they face the real risk of torture and imprisonment by the fascist junta.

Welcoming Min Aung Hlaing and his military forces to Malaysia would be a betrayal of people’s movements in Myanmar. Since the 2021 military coup, the Min Aung Hlaing-led junta overthrew the democratically elected government, imprisoning over 28,000 political prisoners and killing over 8,000 civilians in Myanmar in massive airstrikes.

Not only that, Min Aung Hlaing and his military cartel are the architects of the ongoing Rohingya genocide since 2017, which has taken the lives of thousands of Rohingya, and displaced millions more. Weaponised mass rape, infanticide, forced displacement and indiscriminate shelling are a signature of this military, which has turned the Rohingya's ancestral lands into mass graves, forcing traumatized survivors to risk everything just to escape total extermination.

By rolling out a red carpet for this war criminal, Malaysia hands this junta political legitimacy, and even worse, it becomes an enabler of the genocide against the Rohingya by handing hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people right back to their oppressors.

To understand the moral bankruptcy of this repatriation plan, we must follow the manufactured precarity faced by the Rohingya today. In 1982, the military government of Myanmar enacted the Burma Citizenship Law, stripping the Rohingya of their nationality. Over night, an estimated 800,000 people became de jure stateless; losing access to basic rights such basic education, healthcare and equal work opportunity. Today, over 3.5 million Rohingya still suffer from this fate.

These life-or-death policies are nothing more than divide-and-rule tactics. Amidst a worsening climate catastrophe and socioeconomic crisis caused by imperialism, the Malaysian ruling class, in collaboration with the fascist junta, are eager to scapegoat the lives of Rohingya for their own power and interests.

In reality, official PDRM data reveals that the Rohingya only account for 0.02% of crime, totaling just 89 people of a registered 126,144 refugee population. Moreover, the scrutiny they face for working illegitimately completely ignores the legal limbo Malaysia subjects them to, wherein they cannot formally hold jobs as we lack the necessary legal framework to allow it.

This recent wave in the rise of anti-Rohingya sentiment exposes an uncomfortable hypocrisy within Malaysia's morals. The exact same language used by Western and Zionist-backed media in reference to Palestinians, is parroted by local media and institutions when talking about the Rohingya.

We recognize that it is impossible for Palestinians to recover while suffering under a genocide and how they need our help to afford food or housing, yet turn around and condemn the Rohingya for poverty despite barring them from working.

We would rightfully oppose inviting Netanyahu and the genocidal Zionist regime, and yet negotiate with an ICC-wanted war criminal right next door.

Solidarity must extend across borders. The same way that we vehemently oppose the genocide and forced displacement of Palestinians, we must fight against the deportation of refugees into active conflict zones run by a genocidal regime, headed by war criminal Min Aung Hlaing.

The premise that a safe return is possible for the Rohingya under the rule of Min Aung Hlaing is a lie. Sending them into the hands of the junta that stripped them of their identity is but a foolish blunder; it is a calculated violation of international human rights. It is refoulement disguised as a pragmatic economic policy.

Min Aung Hlaing's impending visit must be stopped.

The Malaysian government must cancel the invitation and withdraw from the scheduled deportations.

We must place human lives above political convenience.

We must refuse to negotiate with war criminals.

GEGAR

24 SEPTEMBER 2026