Hate speech against Rohingya refugees on the rise in Malaysia

Hostile social media content, disinformation campaigns, and a petition calling for their expulsion: in Malaysia, a wave of hate speech has been targeting Rohingya refugees, a Muslim minority driven out of Myanmar. The rising hostility has already led to the eviction of more than 100 people from a village and forced the temporary closure of schools serving refugee children.

For a long time, Malaysia was considered a safe country for Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar.

But the situation began to change in 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the emergence of hate speech online. Recently, anti-Rohingya rhetoric has taken several forms: disinformation, a petition calling on the Malaysian prime minister to expel them that got more than 400,000 signatures before it was taken down, and the spread of slogans like “Save Malaysia from the Rohingya”.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team spoke with a representative of the NGO Article 19. She preferred to remain anonymous for security reasons:

"The recent wave of hate speech against the Rohingya refugees has been one of the most intense on the volume of it, on the scale of it, and it lasted longer than previous times.

For example, they put out narratives like, 'Oh, these people are flying from Myanmar. They're looking for jobs.' And 'Oh, they are here to take away our land,' and stuff like that.

But they’re not telling the truth, because the thing is they're running away from ongoing genocide 16’22 and the violence against them in Myanmar."

Hostile slogans appeared this summer in the village of Kuala Muda, in the state of Penang, where Rohingya families have lived for years. More than a hundred of them fled the village at the end of July, seeking refuge in the capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia’s government announced plans in July to send 5,000 of the Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar. Human rights groups warned they could face serious danger, and the government backtracked, saying the refugees would not be deported if they faced persecution.

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