Junta hails end to US protected status for Myanmar nationals

YANGON - Myanmar’s junta applauded the Trump administration on Nov 26 for halting a scheme that protected its citizens from deportation from the United States back to their war-racked homeland.

Around 4,000 Myanmar citizens are living in the United States with “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS), which shields foreign nationals from deportation to disaster zones and allows them the right to work.

Myanmar nationals were made eligible for the TPS programme after

the military snatched power

in a 2021 coup, sparking a devastating civil war and a raft of repressive legal measures and the arrests of activists.

However, Washington said on Nov 24 it was

removing Myanmar citizens’ eligibility

, citing “substantial steps toward political stability” that include upcoming elections and this summer’s ending of emergency rule.

The move has been panned by monitors who describe the vote as a charade, while localised martial law remains in many places and the military is conscripting unwilling men to bolster its ranks.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said Washington’s announcement was “a positive statement”.

“Myanmar citizens in the United States can come back to the motherland,” he said in a statement, urging them to “come back to Myanmar and vote in the general election”.

“We would like to inform you that you are all welcome to participate in building a modern and developed nation,” he said.

Announcing the TPS stoppage, US President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said “it is safe for Burmese citizens to return home”.

However, the UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) warned on Nov 26 that it was increasingly receiving reports of “serious international crimes committed in Myanmar in the run-up to the elections”.

Detention of election critics and air strikes to claw back territory ahead of the scheduled vote “may amount to persecution and spreading terror in a civilian population as crimes against humanity”, IIMM head Nicholas Koumjian said in a statement.

There is no official toll for Myanmar’s civil war and estimates vary widely.

According to non-profit organisation Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, which tallies media reports of violence, as many as 90,000 have been killed on all sides since the 2021 coup.

Ms Me Me Khant, executive director and co-founder of US-based advocacy group Students for Free Burma, called the TPS stoppage “a slap in the face to the community” of exiled citizens.

“It’s obviously really not safe to go back home,” she told AFP. “Everyone is really upset by the news.”

Myanmar’s military is organising phased elections from Dec 28, projecting a return to normality after grabbing power and jailing democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ms Suu Kyi’s party has been dissolved, new junta-enforced rules punish protests against the poll with up to a decade in prison, and swaths of the nation are locked in combat.

“To hold elections under these circumstances is unfathomable,” Mr Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told AFP in November. AFP