MMEA beefs up patrols around Langkawi after Rohingyas land undetected

THE Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) has doubled its patrols along Langkawi after 196 Myanmar-Rohingya refugees escaped detection and landed ashore in Teluk Yu on the island - metres away from the luxurious Dayang Bay Resort.

As the refugees came ashore, police swooped in and detained them before bringing them to a holding centre in Kuah for investigations and likely resettlement into immigration deportation camps.

The refugees will likely be asking for amnesty status, which the Kuala Lumpur-based United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) needs to determine.

MMEA in a statement said that police had detained 196 undocumented Myanmar migrants in the early hours of Friday after their boat came ashore in Teluk Yu.

The fact that the largely deserted Teluk Yu beachfront is undergoing reclamation works, shows that a syndicate may be involved in bringing across the refugees, as they presumed that they could escape detection, said a travel agent Amirul Hamzah.

The boat escaped two layers of security dragnets - the MMEA and the police marine patrols - both have bases in Langkawi.

“Based on information the coastguard received, two more boats were carrying undocumented Myanmar migrants at sea but their exact location was unknown,” MMEA director-general  Admiral Maritime Datuk Mohd Rosli Abdullah, said.

He pointed out that the authorities were patrolling the northern waters off Langkawi and border areas and had arranged for air surveillance to be conducted to locate the remaining boats.

MMEA is also liaising with their Thai counterparts to assist in the issue.

The Rohingya are a mainly Muslim minority in majority Buddhist Myanmar, where a genocide is alleged to have occurred since August 2017, when violence broke out in Myanmar's Rakhine State.

Around a million Rohingya have fled, mostly to neighbouring Bangladesh, to escape a Myanmar military offensive launched in August 2017 in a campaign that UNHCR investigators have described as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has since denied such allegations.

Malaysia, which does not recognise refugee status, has long been a favoured destination for ethnic Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar or the refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Between 2010 and 2024, Malaysian authorities detained 2,089 undocumented Myanmar migrants attempting to enter the country by sea. - January 4, 2025.