Junta hails end to US protected status for Myanmar nationals

Myanmar’s junta applauded the Trump administration on Wednesday for halting a scheme that protected its citizens from deportation from the US back to their war-racked homeland.

About 4,000 Myanmar citizens are living in the US 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 grabbed power in a 2021 coup, leading to a devastating civil war, repressive legal measures and arrests of activists.

However, Washington said on Monday it was removing Myanmar citizens’ eligibility, citing “substantial steps toward political stability” that included forthcoming elections and this summer’s ending of emergency rule.

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

A junta spokesperson, Zaw Min Tun, said Washington’s announcement was “a positive statement”.

Zaw Min Tun, spokesperson for the junta, welcomed the US decision. Photograph: Hein Htet/EPA

“Myanmar citizens in the United States can come back to the motherland,” he said, 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 added.

Announcing the end of TPS, Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, said: “It is safe for Burmese citizens to return home.”

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

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

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

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

Me Me Khant, executive director and co-founder of the 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 28 December, projecting a return to normal after grabbing power and jailing the democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi.

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

“To hold elections under these circumstances is unfathomable,” Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, told AFP this month.