By: Hafizur Rahman, Camp Correspondent
Langkawi, Malaysia – A boat carrying 196 Rohingya refugees, predominantly women and children, arrived on Langkawi Island early Friday following a perilous 10-day voyage from Myanmar. This marks the first reported arrival of Rohingya refugees in Malaysia in 2025.
The vessel ran aground at Teluk Yu beach around 3:25 a.m. Among the refugees on board were 57 women, 32 boys, and 39 girls, none of whom possessed any identification documents.
Police deployed 31 officers to the scene, detaining the group before transferring them to the local immigration department for processing. Authorities confirmed that health screenings are underway for all the detainees.
Meanwhile, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) has launched search operations for two additional boats suspected to be in the region.
“Efforts to locate the boats are continuing, but their exact positions remain unknown,” said MMEA Director Mohd Rosli Abdullah. He added that personnel are conducting both sea and aerial surveillance to locate the vessels.
Malaysia currently hosts a large number of refugees, with the U.N. refugee agency reporting 192,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers as of late 2024. Of these, 170,000 are from Myanmar, including approximately 111,000 Rohingya.
The Rohingya crisis escalated following a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in August 2017, which forced nearly 800,000 people to flee to refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Many Rohingya, desperate to escape dire conditions in the camps, continue to risk their lives on treacherous sea journeys to seek refuge in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.
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