Kuala Lampur, Oct. 3 -- Malaysia has no legal duty to host the Rohingya, yet it did.

Malaysia never signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, and under our Immigration Act, refugees are treated as irregular migrants, liable to detention and deportation.

Non-refoulement is often thrown at us, but no Malaysian law can enforce it against the government.

UNHCR itself acknowledges that registration does not give refugees legal immigration status in Malaysia.

Yet Malaysia has sheltered the Rohingya since the early 1990s. UNHCR began registering them in 1992, and as of February 2026, recorded 126,144 Rohingya in Malaysia.

Not bad for a country that never signed up to the international refugee regime.

Malaysia has done this before. Between 1975 a...