Dozens of buses arrived under police escort at a stadium near the Lumut naval base in northwestern Malaysia on Tuesday, the AFP news agency reported. Journalists were barred from the grounds. The passengers were expected to be processed before being taken to the base and transported to Myanmar by ship.
The Myanmar army has repeatedly cracked down on the country’s Rohingya minority, including a wave of violence in 2017 that many rights groups have described as genocide, and which set off a major refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, Malaysia, India and other neighbouring nations. Myanmar does not officially recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic community with local roots, instead describing them as “Bengalis” — in effect, calling them Bangladeshi migrants.