Malaysia to provide temporary shelter for Rohingya Muslims

Rohingya insurgents attacked several police posts and an army base in Myanmar on Aug. 25. The ensuing clashes and a military counter-offensive has killed at least 400 people and triggered the exodus of more than 160,000 people to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Malaysia, hundreds of km (miles) to the south on the Andaman Sea, is likely to see more boat people from Myanmar in coming weeks and months because of the renewed violence, said Zulkifli Abu Bakar, the director general of Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency. Malaysia is already home to over 100,000 Rohingya refugees.

"We are supposed to provide basic necessities for them to continue their journey and push them away. But at the end of the day, because of humanitarian reasons, we will not be able to do that," Zulkifli told Reuters, adding that no fresh refugees had been seen yet.

Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation, will likely house the Rohingya refugees in immigration detention centres, where foreigners without documents are typically held, he said.

Malaysia, which has not signed the UN Refugee Convention, treats refugees as illegal migrants. Thailand has also said it is preparing to receive people fleeing the fighting in Myanmar.

There are about 59,000 Rohingya refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia although unofficial numbers are almost double that.

In 2015, mass graves were exhumed at jungle camps on the border between Thailand and Malaysia that were thought to be mainly Rohingya victims of human traffickers.

Meanwhile, the organisation that oversees the Nobel Peace Prize said on Friday that the 1991 prize awarded to Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi cannot be revoked.

Olav Njolstad, head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, said in an email to The Associated Press that neither the will of prize founder Alfred Nobel nor the Nobel Foundation's rules provide for the possibility of withdrawing the honour from laureates.

"It is not possible to strip a Nobel Peace Prize laureate of his or her award once bestowed," Mr. Njolstad wrote. "None of the prize awarding committees in Stockholm and Oslo has ever considered revoking a prize after it has been awarded."

An online petition signed by more than 386,000 people on Change.org is calling for Ms. Suu Kyi to be stripped of her Peace Prize over the persecution of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority.Suu Kyi received the award for "her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights" while standing up against military rulers.

She became the country's de facto leader after Myanmar held its first free election in 2012 and she led her party to a landslide victory.