Malaysian police have broken up a demonstration calling for asylum outside the UN agency in the country's capital, Kuala Lumpur. Several lorries loaded around a hundred people, including women and children, along with their belongings, and took them away without revealing their destination, according to a Reuters report.
The asylum seekers belong to the Rohingya ethnic group, a stateless Muslim minority that was expelled from Burma (now Myanmar) following the military's genocidal campaign in that country in 2017. Since then, more than 700,000 Rohingya have been scattered across refugee camps in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and Laos, confined to these areas and constantly beset by violence and local hate campaigns. These 100 people were driven from their homes by local residents in the northern state of Penang and travelled by bus all night to Kuala Lumpur to apply for resettlement through UNHCR.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim stated on Monday that the gathering outside the UNHCR building had caused concern amongst the public and warned that anyone without the appropriate permits would be detained by the immigration authorities.