Until the celebration of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha in late May, Sadek, a Rohingya activist and founder of Rohingya Rights Response (RRR), was living in relative peace in Malaysia. There had been a steady amount of hostile social media posts about the Rohingya community living in the country since his arrival several years before, but the impact was manageable.
“For the first time in a long time, Malaysia felt like a place where I could breathe,” he said in a recent interview. “I made genuine friends, felt accepted by many people, and slowly started rebuilding a life after everything my family and I had been through.”
But when a negative backlash erupted online in response to cows being slaughtered by Rohingya refugees for Eid al-Adha in the town of Selayang, prompting a viral anti-Rohingya petition, Sadek’s life changed for the worse. “Since May, that feeling has disappeared. It’s heartbreaking to feel that fear return, after finally believing I had found some peace,” he said.
By early June, the petition on Change.org, addressed to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and calling for the “removal of Rohingya from Malaysia,” had garnered almost half a million signatures. Despite the petition’s removal, the anger towards Rohingya refugees had escalated and started impacting the day-to-day lives of many communities.
