Oct. 26 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has requested this Wednesday an extension to stop the deportation of refugees and migrants from Burma due to the serious humanitarian crisis and fundamental freedoms suffered by the population after the February military coup. of 2021.
“With the increasing levels of violence and instability, and the collapse of Burma’s economy and social protection systems, this is not the time to return anyone,” said Türk, after learning that on October 6 more One hundred Burmese citizens who had sought protection through UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, were deported.
Türk explained that a large part of these cases are of political activists, opponents of the military junta and even deserters from the Army, so their return places them in “serious danger”.
For this reason, Türk has urged Malaysia, one of the countries where the greatest number of deportations took place, as well as the rest of the States, to guarantee that no Burmese asylum-seeker is deported by force and, if that is the case, , that your case be evaluated individually and that all the rules of due process are guaranteed.
“Deportations that take place after indefinite detention or detention in manifestly inadequate conditions are unlikely to be truly voluntary and therefore should be avoided,” stresses the UN, which since the military coup in 2021 in Burma has documented “numerous cases “of punishments and reprisals on those who were forced to return.
“People who have fled the country and whom the military consider to be opposed to the coup run the risk of being tortured in custody and sentenced to death”, evidences the United Nations, for which Türk maintains that “now more than ever” the States are refrain from these practices and give legal status to those fleeing violence until Burma is safe.
Since the February 1 coup by the military junta in Burma, at least 70,000 people have fled the country and more than a million have been forced to flee their homes. To all of them is added the million Muslim refugees from the Rohingya community who have found refuge in Bangladesh and the millions of labor migrants who work abroad in an irregular situation.
