Malaysia says Myanmar will take back 5,000 Rohingya

Malaysia says Myanmar has agreed to take back 5,000 Rohingya refugees, in a rare repatriation push announced days after Malaysian authorities detained more than 100 Rohingya outside a UN refugee agency facility in Kuala Lumpur.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said during a visit to a town east of Kuala Lumpur that Myanmar had previously refused to accept them, according to local media.

"Now, because of our good relations with Myanmar, they have agreed to take back 5,000 from Malaysia," media outlets including the New Straits Times quoted Anwar as saying.

Malaysia hosts more than 215,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with the UN refugee agency. They include more than 126,000 Rohingya from Myanmar, making them the country's largest refugee community.

The announcement came after Malaysian authorities detained more than 100 Rohingya refugees outside a UN refugee agency facility in Kuala Lumpur. A Rohingya rights group in Malaysia said the group had sought shelter after being threatened with eviction from an informal settlement in northern Penang state.

Bernama news agency said officials later confirmed that the detainees had valid documentation issued by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. A senior police official said Wednesday that the group had been released and sent to various locations around Malaysia after final verification.

Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not formally recognise refugee status, despite hosting one of Southeast Asia's biggest refugee populations.

Many Rohingya, a mostly Muslim group, fled Myanmar during a 2017 military crackdown. Myanmar's leaders have said the Rohingya are descendants of immigrants from Bangladesh and that the crackdown targeted a militant uprising. The campaign is the subject of a genocide case at the United Nations' top court in The Hague.