Malaysia is set to welcome Myanmar’s military-appointed president for an official visit, in a bid to expedite the return of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees.
Speaking on a podcast yesterday, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said that he had invited Min Aung Hlaing to the country, on the condition that Myanmar agrees to take back citizens currently in Malaysia.
“I invited him to say we can be friends, we can trade, we can accept Myanmar, but Myanmar must accept them [the refugees] back,” Reuters reported.
If the trip eventuates, Malaysia will become the fifth member state of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to host Min Aung Hlaing since he took office in April, after trips to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It will also become the first nation from maritime Southeast Asia to take such a step.
The six maritime ASEAN states – Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, and Timor-Leste – have generally been more critical of Myanmar’s military than the nations of the mainland, since the coup of 2021.
Malaysia in particular has been one of the most outspoken, repeatedly expressing frustration at the Myanmar military’s refusal to cease hostilities and counseling a harder ASEAN line.
Anwar said yesterday that Malaysia was not ready to recognize Myanmar’s new government, but needed an authority to negotiate with on returning refugees.
“To me, that’s better diplomacy than just shouting angrily at Myanmar. Who’s going to take them? Where do we send them? They don’t even have Myanmar citizenship,” he said. “We, following ASEAN, don’t want direct relations with Myanmar. So who are we supposed to negotiate with?”
While Malaysia’s hard line on Myanmar has softened somewhat over the past year, Anwar is under pressure to respond to the growing public hostility toward the Rohingya in Malaysia.
Large numbers of Rohingya have come to the country since 2017, when the Myanmar military launched an ethnic cleansing campaign that pushed more than 740,000 from their homes in Rakhine State into Bangladesh. Around 126,000 Rohingya asylum seekers are currently registered with the U.N. refugee agency in Kuala Lumpur, around half of the agency’s total, although Malaysia does not recognize them as refugees.
While the Rohingya were initially welcomed by their co-religionists, public opinion has soured in recent years as the population has continued to grow. During the course of 2026, in particular, Rohingya have faced an upsurge of xenophobic rhetoric and public hostility, particularly online.
This has put pressure on Malaysia’s government to advance long-stalled talks aimed at the refugees’ repatriation. The country’s immigration authorities have already reached a deal with Naypyidaw for the “voluntary” repatriation of some 5,000 refugees, which make up around half of the 10,388 Myanmar nationals currently being held at immigration detention depots.
The first 1,476 of this group is scheduled to return to Myanmar on September 29 aboard two Myanmar Navy warships and a hospital ship. In announcing the repatriation, the Ministry of Home Affairs stated that the refugees’ presence had become a “major financial burden, caused serious social problems, and created a real security threat to the country.”
Anwar said yesterday that the government was ultimately planning to send back 200,000 people, and that this could be carried out in stages if Myanmar was unable to receive all of them at once.
“If they cannot take 200,000 at one go, take them back in stages and we will help resolve it,” he said.
While the Malaysian side is narrowly focused on reaching a deal on refugees, Myanmar likely has wider diplomatic goals in mind. Since taking office in April, Min Aung Hlaing has been on a regional charm offensive aimed at consolidating key partnerships and seeking injections of foreign investment to revive Myanmar’s war-damaged economy. This has involved state visits to India, China, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and also to the four mainland ASEAN member states.
In particular, he has prioritized the normalization of Myanmar’s relations with ASEAN. Since late 2021, the bloc has excluded the country from its summits over its failure to implement its Five-Point Consensus conflict resolution plan. This plan calls for a cessation of violence, access to humanitarian aid, and inclusive dialogue involving “all parties” to the country’s conflict.
While Myanmar will no doubt seek to milk the Malaysia invitation for maximum legitimacy – a presidential spokesperson said this week that these countries “fully support Myanmar’s resumption of its active engagement in ASEAN as before” – the success of refugee repatriations remains very much in doubt.
The first question is whether the returns will be in any way “voluntary.” The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has already expressed concerns about the September 29 repatriation, saying that the ongoing conflict and repression made it difficult to guarantee refugees’ safe return.
“Under customary international law – a binding obligation on all states – no one should be sent to a country where their rights or freedoms may be at risk,” UNHCR told Reuters last month. “Any refugee return must be voluntary, based on an informed decision, and take place in conditions of safety and dignity.”
The second issue is whether the Naypyidaw government even has the authority to negotiate the return of Rohingya to Rakhine State. Most of the state is now under the control of the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine nationalist organization that is fighting for – and, since late 2023, has largely achieved – autonomy from the central state. This includes the northern townships of Maungdaw and Buthidaung, where a large proportion of Rohingya formerly lived.
How these refugees are to be returned remains very much an open question. A recent Myanmar military offensive aimed at seizing back territory from the AA around the state capital of Sittwe appears to have ground to a halt, leaving the central state with precarious footholds in Rakhine.