Rohingya in Malaysia and the language of disease

Guest contributor Shafiur Rahman In recent months, hostility towards Rohingya refugees in Malaysia has intensified into a wider anti-Rohingya mobilisation. The Rohingya are a stateless minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine State where they have faced decades of genocidal persecution, apartheid-like restrictions and military violence.Hundreds of thousands were driven into Bangladesh by Myanmar’s 2017 military campaign, while others have made dangerous journeys over many years to Malaysia, often by sea, seeking safety, work and a future. In Malaysia, however, refugees are not formally recognised in law, cannot work legally and often live as urban refugees in conditions of insecurity. The latest backlash has gone far beyond ordinary public debate. An online petition calling for Rohingya refugees to be removed from the country gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures before it was removed. Human rights groups warned that the campaign was fuelling misinformation, harassment and threats against an already vulnerable refugee community. Another petition went further, calling for Rohingya women holding UNHCR cards, the identity documents issued by the U.N. refugee agency to registered refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, to be sterilised. Rohingya activists and supporters have also faced online abuse, doxxing and threatening comments, while fabricated claims about Rohingya making demands for land and special rights in Malaysia have circulated widely on social media. The hostility has also been fed by repeated claims that Rohingya are responsible for crime, disorder and pressure on local communities. The police have had to intervene publicly. Inspector-General of Police Khalid Ismail said criminal cases involving Rohingya made up only 0.02 per cent of recorded crime nationwide, while the police chief in Perak, a state in northern Malaysia, urged the public not to take action themselves and said complaints should be channelled to the authorities. Yet the rhetoric has continued to escalate. On MalaysiaGazette, a Malaysian online news platform, law professor Salawati Mat Basir appeared in a discussion on Rohingya refugees and repeated, without clear condemnation, calls to shoot boats carrying Rohingya before they reached territorial waters. “Shoot. Shoot them,” she said, recounting what military and security figures had told her. “Don’t let them come into your territorial waters.” To repeat, she did not condemn the idea. Instead, she made it sound like a legitimate question of sovereignty, security and defence. The language is shocking, but it is not without precedent. It belongs to an old Malaysian script for boat refugees. In June 1979, during the Vietnamese “boat people” crisis, Malaysia’s then Deputy Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was widely reported as warning that new refugee boats would face a “shoot on sight” policy if they tried to enter Malaysian waters. The government later denied that it intended to shoot refugees, with officials even claiming Mahathir had meant “shoo” rather than “shoot”. What was revealed then is being revived now. The moment refugees appear at sea, Malaysian vocabulary can slide from humanitarian concern to deterrence, from deterrence to pushback, and from pushback to the idea of shooting people before they reach shore. The alarm has not come only from Rohingya advocates. Malaysia’s own human rights commission, SUHAKAM, has warned about rising hate speech and concerns over harassment and doxxing targeting Rohingya communities. Fortify Rights has reported calls for the expulsion of Rohingya refugees and noted that some public officials have contributed to the hostile environment through removal rhetoric. ARTICLE 19 has also warned of a recent proliferation of hate speech and discrimination targeting Rohingya refugees in Malaysia. Other civil society organisations have raised similar concerns. It is against this backdrop that one poster began circulating widely. I receive posters, leaflets and screenshots about Rohingya refugees in Malaysia almost daily now. Most of it is the usual diet of anti-Rohingya racism – invasion panic, criminality claims, demographic anxiety, calls for exclusion dressed up as public safety and news on raids. However, this poster below belongs to a particular moment – a move from anti-refugee resentment into public campaigns encouraging ordinary Malaysians to deny Rohingya housing, work, transport and trade. And it caught my eye not only because of what the poster says, but because of what is being said by those spreading it. The poster’s headline is blunt: “Jangan sampai jadi barah, cegah sekarang [Don’t let it become a cancer. Prevent it now].” Beside the headline is not a picture of some crime scene or border crossing. It is a classic germ icon, a visual shorthand for infection. The poster does not merely argue that undocumented people should be reported. It imagines them as a disease entering the body of Malaysia. The “it” is not named in the poster itself, but the context supplied by those circulating it makes the target clear – Rohingya refugees and undocumented migrants. U.N. figures show that, as of the end of February 2026, Malaysia hosted about 215,600 registered refugees and asylum seekers. Of these, 193,824 were from Myanmar, including 126,144 Rohingya, 15,774 Chin, and 33,002 people from other ethnic groups fleeing conflict or persecution in Myanmar. The remaining 21,776 were from more than 50 other countries, including Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Sri Lanka, Palestine and Iraq. The poster then gives four instructions: do not rent them houses, do not rent them vehicles, do not allow them to trade, and do not employ them. It ends by urging people to report violations to the authorities. On the surface, it presents itself as a law-and-order campaign. But the language tells another story. “Cancer” is not a legal category. It is a disease metaphor. It turns a vulnerable population into something malignant growing inside the body of the nation. Many Malaysians have shared it on social media. One accompanying post makes the message even clearer. It says that in the past two weeks, Rohingya have been expelled “secara besar-besaran” – on a large scale – by villagers in Seberang Perai Utara, a district in Penang, especially around Penaga, alongside Immigration operations across the state. It then warns that Rohingya are fleeing and looking for new shelter nearby, and urges landlords in Kg Baru Alma, near Bukit Mertajam in Penang, not to rent to them. So the structure is not subtle: Drive them out. Warn nearby communities. Deny them shelter. Deny them transport. Deny them work. Report them to the authorities. How is this merely “respect the law”? It is a neighbourhood vigilante campaign. The phrase “puak-puak Rohingya” is also telling. “Puak” can be translated as group, tribe, faction or l