‘Deluded’ Trump administration deems Myanmar safe, tells citizens to go back home

Singapore: The Trump administration has told thousands of Myanmar citizens on temporary protection visas in the US that they have two months to go home because their war-torn and deeply impoverished country is now safe.

The decision from the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on Tuesday AEDT has appalled advocates, who say it is “deluded” and predicated on falsehoods, so egregious that it is hard to imagine who would believe them.

The military junta led by senior general Min Aung Hlaing has killed, tortured or imprisoned tens of thousands of people since it took power in a coup from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

The United Nations estimates that almost half of the nation’s 50 million people need humanitarian assistance, as the regime wages a multi-front war, enabled by Russian and Chinese weapons, against a disparate collection of armed ethnic groups and civilians turned freedom fighters.

But Noem this week decided to revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of more than 4000 US-based citizens of Myanmar, which is still known as Burma in the US, after determining the nation had made “notable progress” in governance and stability.

The progress included “plans for free and fair elections, successful ceasefire agreements, and improved local governance contributing to enhanced public service delivery and national reconciliation”.

“The situation in Burma has improved enough that it is safe for Burmese citizens to return home, so we are terminating the Temporary Protected Status,” Noem said in a statement.

Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates, said on Tuesday that if Noem’s order was carried out, the US was delivering people to “prisons, brutal torture and death”.

“Secretary Noem is seriously deluded if she thinks the upcoming elections in Myanmar will be even remotely free and fair, and she is just making things up when she claims non-existent ceasefires proclaimed by Myanmar’s military junta will result in political progress,” he said.

“In its effort to empty the US of any black or brown asylum people seeking protection, the Trump administration is aiding and abetting the Myanmar military junta, which is actively seeking to crush its people.”

Most analysts regard the elections promised for the end of the year as a sham engineered to entrench military power and win international legitimacy that the generals so desperately crave.

John Sifton, Asia advocacy director from Human Rights Watch, said the revoked state of emergency referenced in positive tones by Noem was in fact “immediately replaced with a new state of emergency and martial law in scores of townships across nine states and regions”.

He also pointed to a statement from the United States Mission to the UN issued just last week that noted “continuous evidence” of abuses by the military and some armed groups in Myanmar.

That US statement was supporting a UN Resolution that reiterated the body’s abhorrence of the military’s “widespread [and] deliberate” mass killings, systematic torture, and aerial attacks against civilians, schools, hospitals and places of worship.

The UN estimated in May that military attacks since the 2021 coup had killed close to 7000 civilians – including more than 800 children – and that the regime was holding more than 22,000 political prisoners, including Suu Kyi.

Myanmar Now, an independent media organisation forced to operate from outside the country, reported on Tuesday that eight civilians were killed in Junta airstrikes the day before. It also reported this week that the junta had torched at least 20 villages along one strategic road in central Myanmar since the beginning of November.

TPS status for Myanmar had been extended for 18 months by US President Joe Biden. That extension expired on Tuesday.

Noem said she made her decision after a review of the situation in Myanmar by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and consultations with the State Department.

“She further determined that permitting Burmese nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States,” USCIS said.

Carolyn Tran, the executive director of advocacy group United for Status and Protection, said earlier this month that more than 675,000 people from multiple developing countries were at risk of deportation because of the removal of TPS protections under the Trump administration.

“This is not about policy,” she said. “This is about a calculated effort to attack immigrants of colour.”

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