ASEAN Beat | Society | Southeast Asia

Malaysian Authorities Detain More Than 100 Rohingya Asylum Seekers Outside UNHCR Office

The detention of the group, who were reportedly driven out of a settlement in Penang on Sunday, comes amid rising public hostility toward Rohingya refugees.

Malaysian authorities yesterday detained more than 100 Rohingya Muslim asylum seekers who had ‌gathered outside the office of the United Nations refugee agency in Kuala Lumpur, after being evicted from their settlement in the northern state of Penang.

According to a report by the New Straits Times, the group was transferred in four police vehicles from outside the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at around 8:20 p.m. yesterday, along with “luggage and personal belongings.”

The paper today quoted Kuala Lumpur police chief Fadil Marsus as saying that 113 refugees, including 110 Rohingya, were being held at police headquarters. Fadil also said checks conducted during the documentation process at the police headquarters found that all the Rohingya refugees possessed valid UNHCR documents.

The refugees said they had traveled to the UNHCR office after being driven out of their homes by local residents in the northern state of Penang on Sunday, and were seeking advice on resettlement, Reuters reported.

The news agency cited Penang police as saying that the Rohingya had “voluntarily moved” to Kuala Lumpur ​with the assistance of state and federal authorities.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said yesterday that he had directed police and immigration authorities to “take firm action” against the refugees in order “to control the situation and ensure public peace is maintained.” In an accompanying video, he said, “No one has the right to take over any part of the city.”

The incident comes amid a rising tide of popular hostility and online hate speech toward Rohingya refugees. Last month, more than half a million people signed a petition on Change.org calling for the removal of Rohingya refugees from Malaysia, which followed an outraged online response to cows being slaughtered by Rohingya refugees for the festival of Eid al-Adha. Prominent public figures have since described the Rohingya as “criminals” and “intruders” and likened them to a “cancer” on the country, while social media posts have encouraged violence against the Rohingya or encouraged users to report the locations of Rohingya refugees to the authorities.

Rohingya asylum seekers have arrived in Malaysia steadily over the past two decades, and particularly since 2017, when an ethnic cleansing campaign by the Myanmar military pushed more than 740,000 from Rakhine State into Bangladesh. Around 126,000 Rohingya are currently registered with UNHCR, more than half of the total, but Malaysia does not recognize the Rohingya as refugees, and, in line with the growing public hostility, has in recent years tightened the enforcement of its immigration laws against them.

Last week, Malaysia ordered UNHCR to temporarily stop registering new refugees in the country, as it begins operating its own system for managing asylum-seekers. The system, known as DPP, is set to apply much more stringent criteria than UNHCR about who can be granted refugee status in the country.

In this context, the online hate campaign has led to growing government scrutiny of Rohingya communities, and prompted investigations, raids, and the closures of........

© The Diplomat