KUALA LUMPUR— Just hours after a Feb. 23 court hearing granted a temporary stay to Myanmar nationals in Malaysia to protect asylum seekers who fled religious and ethnic persecution, 1,086 Myanmar citizens were deported on three ships by Myanmar’s military at the Malaysian Royal Navy base in Lumut, on the West coast of Malaysia.

The UN’s refugee agency, denied access to the immigration detention centers since August 2019, was not allowed to evaluate and separate asylum seekers from the group deported, which sources say include Chin Christians who had fled persecution in Myanmar.

READ: Myanmar's Asylum Seekers In Malaysia Face Uncertain Deportation To Military Regime

James Bawi Thang Bik, a Chin community leader from Kuala Lumpur, heard that asylum-seekers from his community were on the list to be deported only when they were allowed to make a phone call from the immigration lockup.

“In some detention camps, the detainees were given a chance to contact their family by the immigration officers,” he said. “So they reached out to us, because they do not have family in Malaysia. They said they were told that they will be sent back to Myanmar by the boats, and that some of them didn't understand the [political] situation in Myanmar. Some of them who knew about it [the coup] told me that they prefer to stay in the detention camp in Malaysia rather than going back.”

The Malaysian government plan to repatriate the Myanmar citizens amidst the unstable political context in Myanmar was met by harsh criticism by human rights NGOs in Malaysia, Malaysian parliament members, foreign missions and refugee community leaders. An online campaign launched by human rights groups resulted in more than 1,000 letters being sent to the Malaysian authorities pleading for the halt of the deportation operation.

The Malaysian Immigration department stated in the press release announcing the plan that no UNHCR card holders would be among the 1,200 scheduled to be repatriated, but days after that announcement information regarding the fact that UNHCR card holders and children with parents in Malaysia were among those scheduled to be deported started to emerge from unofficial sources.

In a last-minute attempt to stop the deportation, Amnesty International Malaysia and Asylum Access filed for a judicial review with the Malaysian High Court on Feb. 22, based on evidence that three people registered with UNHCR and 17 minors who have at least one parent in Malaysia were among those to be deported. In a hearing that took place online on Feb. 23, the court decided on a temporary reprieve of the deportation process.

Malaysia is not a signatory of the 1959 UN refugee convention but is a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is meant in part to protect children from deportation without their parents.

Shortly after the deportation, the Malaysian Immigration Department insisted in a press release that “all detainees deported are illegal migrants, citizens of Myanmar and do not involve Rohingya or asylum seekers. All those deported have agreed to return voluntarily without coercion by any party.”

Human rights groups are shocked by the decision to go ahead with the deportation, with Amnesty International Malaysia calling it “inhumane and devastating.”

“We believed that with a court order those due to be deported would be safe, and so we are shocked that the government went ahead with the deportation,” said Amnesty International’s Malaysia executive director Katrina Jorene Maliamauv. “Authorities insist those deported agreed to return voluntarily – but the options for people and their families were between indefinite detention or returning to an extremely volatile situation amid a coup.”

A judicial review Feb. 24 is expected to provide more details.