Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing Arrives in Malaysia for Talks With Anwar as Repatriation of Myanmar Nationals Draws UN Objections

October 7: Myanmar’s President Min Aung Hlaing, the general who led the 2021 coup, arrived in Malaysia on Wednesday for a two-day official visit. He landed at the Bunga Raya Complex of Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:30 p.m. and was received with a guard of honour, the Malaysian news agency Bernama reported. He is to meet Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Putrajaya on Thursday. Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry says the return of Myanmar nationals who are in Malaysia without papers will be a main subject. The UN refugee agency and rights groups have opposed those returns, Arab News reported.

Key highlights

• Nearly 1,500 Myanmar nationals were sent back from Malaysia in the past few days, and about 5,000 have agreed to return in stages, according to Arab News.
• Malaysia has not said how many of those returned were Rohingya, Malay Mail reported.
• Anwar told Parliament on Tuesday that he and two ministers “will raise issues towards a solution” during the visit.
• Malaysia is the fifth ASEAN member Min Aung Hlaing has visited, after Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, Arab News said.
• ASEAN has kept Myanmar’s leaders out of its top-level meetings since the coup of February 2021.

The programme

What Malaysia says the visit is for

Wisma Putra, the Malaysian Foreign Ministry, said in announcing the visit that the talks would cover “the voluntary, dignified and safe repatriation of Myanmar nationals of all ethnic groups who had been in Malaysia illegally”, The Star reported. Other subjects are ASEAN’s mechanisms on Myanmar, peace and reconciliation, and humanitarian access. Bernama said the ministry described the visit as in line with the decision of the 48th ASEAN Summit in May to continue engaging with Myanmar.

“During the visit of the President of Myanmar to Malaysia in the next few days, the foreign minister, the home minister, and I will raise issues towards a solution,” Anwar told Parliament on Tuesday, according to Malay Mail. The Star noted that Anwar met Min Aung Hlaing twice in 2025, when Malaysia chaired ASEAN, and that Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan has travelled to Myanmar three times since April 2025.

The numbers behind the dispute

Why the returns are contested

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and rights groups have opposed the repatriation, Arab News reported. Their concern is who is being sent back and to what. Malaysia has not disclosed how many Rohingya were in the first group, and rights advocates fear that people who fled the military’s 2017 crackdown could be among those returned, Malay Mail reported. Myanmar is still at war with itself. “Without meaningful action to resolve the civil war in Myanmar, the repatriation remains risky,” an analyst at the conflict-monitoring group ACLED told Arab News.

Malaysia’s position, as set out by Wisma Putra, is that the returns are voluntary and concern people who were in the country illegally.

What it means

Each side gets something different from the visit. For Min Aung Hlaing it is recognition. ASEAN as a bloc still keeps Myanmar’s leaders away from its summits, more than five years after the coup, but its members have been receiving him one by one, and Malaysia, which chaired the group last year and led its Myanmar diplomacy, is the most significant host so far.

For Anwar the gain is practical. Nearly 12,000 Myanmar nationals were in Malaysian immigration detention in August, and returns need a government in Naypyitaw willing to take people back. The cost is the criticism he is already facing: that returns arranged with the authorities people fled from cannot be called safe while the war continues, and that Rohingya may be caught up in them.

For the region the visit shows a two-track policy hardening into habit: exclusion at the summit table, engagement in bilateral meetings. That matters to Myanmar’s other neighbours, including Bangladesh, Thailand and India, which all deal with people displaced by the conflict. We reported Malaysia’s approval of a second group of returns in the Asia Briefing of 6 October.

What to watch

• Thursday’s meeting in Putrajaya and any joint statement, in particular what it says about how returns are checked and monitored.
• Whether Malaysia says how many Rohingya have been or will be returned.
• The response from UNHCR and from other ASEAN members.

Sources

• Bernama, via Media Selangor: Myanmar president arrives in Malaysia, repatriation among key issues
• The Star: Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing to visit Malaysia Oct 7 to 8 for bilateral talks
• Arab News: Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing visits Malaysia amid criticism over repatriation of nationals
• Malay Mail: Anwar: Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing to visit Malaysia ‘in next few days’

Written by

International Desk

The International Desk covers world and Asian affairs, diplomacy and conflict, with a focus on what they mean for India. Stories are checked against at least two credible sources before publication.

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