UNHCR will begin individual assessments on Chin refugees globally to determine if they will continue receiving international protection under its refugee protection agency.

“While the situation in Myanmar is still fluid and unstable in parts of the country, the situation in Chin State is now stable and secure from a refugee protection perspective.

“Based on this, UNHCR presumes that ethnic Chin refugees are safely able to avail themselves to the protection of the Myanmar government and hence are no longer in need of international protection from UNHCR,” a statement from the UNHCR office in Malaysia said today.

It added that UNHCR will no longer recognise an individual as a refugee if the assessment proves against the refugee’s need for continued international protection.

However, if the assessment proves otherwise, the refugee’s file will remain active with the UNHCR.

The statement also said that UNHCR will continue speaking with the Chin community to explain the new policy and the options available to Chin refugees while receiving feedback regarding their concerns.

“In Malaysia, UNHCR will also continue to work closely with the Chin refugee communities to help find long-term solutions for their community.

"For the last four years, UNHCR has also advocated with the Malaysian government to regularise Chin refugees into its domestic labour migration scheme."

Meanwhile, members of the Chin community in Malaysia gathered outside UNHCR office in Kuala Lumpur today for a peaceful demonstration to demand that the UN agency continue protecting their refugee status.

Speaking to reporters at the protest, Falam Refugee Organisation President John Bawi Luai Thanga said that the refugee policy which UNHCR decided upon for the Chin people was “not fair.”

“If they take all the (refugee) cards back, we will no longer be consigned with the UNHCR. They just want to leave us like that. That is not fair.

“They must have proper repatriation according to UNHCR law and the government law as well.

“They don’t arrange anything and they just simply say that ‘your country is improving, you can go back.’ That’s all. They don’t provide any legal papers, any money, or instruct us on any way to go back to Myanmar.”

“And when we ask questions, they don’t allow us to raise so many questions. They just announce like that and that’s all.

“We feel very sad and this is (a) kind of discrimination against Chins from UNHCR Malaysia,” Thanga said on behalf of the Chin community in Malaysia.

'Not safe to go home'

Asked if the protestors present wanted to return home to the Chin state in Myanmar, Alliance of Chin Refugees Coordinator James Bawi Thang said that while they would like to go home, the conflict in Myanmar prevents them from doing so.

“If we can, yes, of course, we would want to go back to our motherland but we cannot go back because around our neighbouring states there is active fighting.

“On June 8, our Chin people were forced to welcome Burmese soldiers who killed minor ethnic groups into our Chin state,” said Thang.

He added that it was also not safe for them to go home because they lacked valid documents to prove their identity.

“They (Chin refugees) left all of their documents in their houses. They left everything. How are they going to prove that they are from Myanmar?” he said.

At the end of the demonstration, several representatives from the Chin community met with UNHCR Representative for Malaysia Richard Towle for about an hour to submit their statement regarding their dissatisfaction with the refugee policy.

Alliance of Chin Refugees Chairperson Mung Khat, who was present at the meeting, told Malaysiakini that the UNHCR deemed their statement as “not appropriate” and requested a formal proposal entailing why the Chin refugees needed their statuses extended.

“If you have a proposal, put it together and let’s have a discussion and we can find other solutions together,” Mung Khat said in summarising what Towle said.

Chin refugees have been in Malaysia for over a decade after many of which fled as a result of ethnic and religious persecution in Myanmar.

The Chin people in Myanmar are one of the minority ethnic groups and many of them are Christian in a predominantly Buddhist country.

According to the UNHCR official website, there are 31,150 Chin refugees registered with UNHCR in Malaysia as of May 2018 although multiple Chin representatives at the demonstration today told Malaysiakini that there were over 50,000 of them residing here.

Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has no national refugee law.

This lack of legal recognition means that refugees cannot work nor go to government schools and their lack of access to legal recourse makes them vulnerable to detention and crime.