Fortify Rights said on 12 March that Rohingya refugees in Malaysia are being held indefinitely in harsh and degrading conditions in immigration detention centres, warning that many detainees face years of detention without legal recourse or access to courts.
The full release is as follows.
On January 1, 2026, the government of Malaysia began a new refugee registration scheme, the Dokumen Pendaftaran Pelarian (Refugee Registration Document, known as the DPP). The programme, implemented by the Home Affairs Ministry with the aim of registering refugees in Malaysia, replaces the current U.N. Refugee Agency’s registration. The government is first piloting the scheme with refugee detainees held in the Immigration Detention Centers (IDC).
“Malaysia’s immigration detention is notorious for being one of the most broken and abusive systems globally. Many detainees are held in horrendous conditions,” said Yap Lay Sheng, Senior Human Rights Specialist at Fortify Rights. “For Rohingya, due to their manufactured statelessness, they can be detained indefinitely in legal limbo, subjected to years of severe abuse and inhumane treatment.“
Between April and December 2025, Fortify Rights conducted 16 interviews with Rohingya current and former detainees—including two who called from within IDCs—their family members, and other witnesses, who described how detainees are held for extended periods without legal representation, judicial oversight, or avenues to challenge their detention. While in detention, immigration officials subject interviewees to further torture and severe ill-treatment.
According to the latest government statistics, IDCs nationwide are operating at or near full capacity. The IDCs currently hold more than 21,000 migrants and refugees—only a few hundred below the government’s declared limit of 21,530. Of this total, detainees from Myanmar constitute the largest nationality group, at 8,884 individuals, including 5,102 Rohingya; approximately one in every four detainees is Rohingya. The National Human Rights Commission of Malaysia has also found instances in which authorities declared IDC capacities in excess of their officially gazetted limits.
Arbitrary and Indefinite Detention
Rohingya refugees are often held in indefinite detention in the IDCs without judicial remedies that can limit the period of detention, effectively amounting to arbitrary detention that contravenes international law.
In December 2024, “Bibi,” not her real name, a 15-year-old Rohingya girl, was traveling with her uncle, “Abdul”, from Terengganu state in northeastern Peninsular Malaysia to the capital, Kuala Lumpur, when police stopped their bus at a checkpoint. Because she lacked U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) documents, the police arrested and detained her at the Kuala Krai police station.
Her uncle told Fortify Rights that police officers solicited bribes in exchange for her release, but then reneged on her release after the family paid a bribe. “I arranged for 2,000 ringgit [approximately US$500],” he said. “The officer told me they would release her after a day or two.” The officers refused to accept the payment through official channels. Abdul explained, “They summoned us to a location. We went into the officer’s car. He took the money and told us to get out. They took the money but didn’t release her.”
Bibi, a minor, has now been detained at the Tanah Merah IDC for more than a year. During video calls with her family, she described contracting scabies and frequently falling ill. “When she asks for medicine from officers, they kick and punch her,” Abdul told Fortify Rights.
In another incident, in January 2025, authorities arrested “Siddiq,” 26, although he possessed a UNHCR card. He said the authorities “destroyed my UNHCR card and threw it away into the trash” at the Putrajaya immigration office, where arrestees were taken in for processing. At the time, an officer reportedly told the individuals that they were no longer registered refugees but were instead “kosong” (literally “zero”), a colloquial Malay term for undocumented status.
Authorities detained Siddiq beyond the 14-day remand period that authorities use to verify refugee status. “After 14 days, I was sent to the Magistrate’s Court. They asked for documents and UNHCR card number. I don’t have the card number, so the magistrate put my status as undocumented,” Siddiq recounted. “I started worrying that I cannot be released because I didn’t have a card.”
Although Siddiq was eventually released after obtaining a replacement card, other detainees have their cards routinely confiscated–or damaged by immigration officers, stripping refugees of the only documentation that could protect them from arrest and prolonged detention.
In February 2024, “Razia,” 35, visited her husband at a police station where police detained him on immigration-related charges. Though he was a UNHCR-registered refugee, Razia told Fortify Rights, “They [the police] threw the card away. Then they told him, ‘Now you don’t have a card, we have to arrest you.’ They threw the card away on the spot. The card is lost. I don’t know where it is now.”
The police then moved Razia’s husband away from the station, but despite making direct requests to the police for information, Malaysian authorities failed to disclose the whereabouts of her husband.
She has not seen or heard from him for more than two years, in what may amount to a case of an enforced disappearance.
“I want to know where my husband is and I want to meet him again,” she told Fortify Rights.
Once in detention, detainees can be held incommunicado, cut off from families and denied access to UNHCR, leaving them with no means to seek refugee registration, often the only means for securing release.
Since August 2019, the Malaysian government has barred the UNHCR from entering IDCs, hindering effective oversight and protection of refugees and other vulnerable individuals. The Home Ministry has denied allegations that it bars UNHCR access, highlighting that it has granted two visits to UNHCR in 2025 to individual IDCs. However, such limited, ad hoc access falls far short of any meaningful or effective monitoring, which requires regular UNHCR access to all IDCs and their detainees.
As a result, detainees can languish in IDCs for a long period. According to one Rohingya former detainee, “There were thousands of people in there. Some of them are in there for seven or eight years.”
Lack of Due Process
Current and former detainees who spoke to Fortify Rights described how some had never been brought before a court nor given the opportunity to engage a lawyer, violating international legal standards for due process and detention.
“I was never brought to a lawyer or a court,” said “Sara,” 25, who was detained with her three- and four-year-old children in November 2023. “The only thing they did was to take my fingerprint on the morning I was arrested. Nothing after that.”
She said the family was only released from the Machap Umboo IDC after the UNHCR reportedly intervened in early 2025, after they were detained for more than a year.
In certain cases, detainees are brought to court, but proceedings are conducted without interpreters or access to legal counsel. As a result, detainees often lack a clear understanding of the charges they face. Malaysia’s state-funded legal aid programme, administered through the National Legal Aid Foundation, does not extend to adult non-Malaysian nationals.
Since 2006, Malaysia has instituted a Special Sessions Court for Immigration for detainees within the highly securitized complexes of the IDCs. In 2020, the government increased the number of these courts to “expedite disposal of cases” and “prevent backlog of cases.”
One humanitarian worker who accompanied a refugee to proceedings in one of these courts—together with another refugee acting as a volunteer interpreter—told Fortify Rights that they were denied entry to the detention facility where the court was held:
They [the authorities] said, “The court is inside the detention center, so you cannot enter. Only the lawyer or a witness, or someone called by the court, can go in.” … The lawyer called [name withheld] to enter to translate. They denied his entry and said, “You are a refugee. You cannot enter. Even if the court summoned you, you cannot enter, even if you are a UNHCR card holder.”
The Malaysian Bar Council has previously reported how the vast majority of detainees in these special courts were unrepresented by legal counsel, frequently pleaded guilty without understanding the consequences, were often not informed of the charges against them, and were processed in group hearings with little or no individualized judicial inquiry, raising serious concerns about the lack of fair trial and due process guarantees.
Ill-Treatment and Inhuman and Degrading Detention Conditions
Rohingya refugees and other detainees interviewed by Fortify Rights described pervasive ill-treatment, severe overcrowding, denial of food and clean drinking water, lack of access to healthcare, and other abuses amounting to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in the IDCs.
An 18-year-old Rohingya, “Ali,” arrested in 2024 and detained in the state of Johor, described conditions unfit for detainees and experiencing repeated abuse. Speaking to Fortify Rights by phone from within the IDC, he said:
They put over 220 people in one detention cell, all crammed together. I can’t sleep, move and even take a shower properly. They don’t provide me and others enough and timely food either. Moreover, the officers often made us do ‘muster’ [roll c all in stress position].
Multiple detainees reported being subjected to physical violence and collective punishment for minor or arbitrary reasons.
“Kamal,” 38, a UNHCR-registered Rohingya refugee from Klang, recounted physical abuse and overcrowding inside the IDCs. He described how a total of 134 men had to share a space barely 20 to 30 feet long. “We had to sleep in two rows packed tight. Our heads and legs were touching and there was no free space,” he told Fortify Rights. “If I needed to go to the toilet, I had to cross over the bodies of others since there was no space left.”
Kamal told Fortify Rights how officers would punish them for minor infractions or arbitrarily, saying, “Sometimes, if people speak loudly, they would just come in and start beating. They also made us do “muster.” If anyone mistakenly turns his head during the muster time, the officials also beat [them].”
Zahid’s wife, who arrived in Malaysia in 2024, was arrested while seven months pregnant and has been in detention for more than a year. She was forced to give birth inside a detention camp. He told Fortify Rights:
My wife was arrested seven months ago at home by immigration. She arrived in Malaysia in 2024. Until now, she remains in detention. She had to give birth to our child in detention camp. Two women officials broke into the house we lived in and arrested her by force … My wife was arrested in Kota Baru and taken to Tanah Merah camp.
According to Zahid, his wife was subjected to degrading treatment. He said, “My wife told me that … she has to keep the child asleep in the evening. She said she can’t get enough sleep as the officers force her to dance for them.”
“Shabbir,” a 33-year-old Rohingya refugee whose pregnant wife was arrested in January 2025, and who has remained in detention since, told Fortify Rights that his wife was denied maternal healthcare. “She told me that they beat her during the delivery. She was unable to deliver and didn’t know how to. She was physically beaten at that time,” Shabbir said.
Shabbir also described extortion inside the detention system, telling Fortify Rights: “Two months after I was released, I was able to talk to my wife. I had to pay 200 ringgit to transfer the money out of my account to the officer’s [to be able to call my wife].”
Other detainees suffer from long-term health conditions due to prolonged medical neglect.
“Shomin” told Fortify Rights that his 13-year-old brother has been arrested and detained since May 24, 2022, after attempting to enter Malaysia. The brother has since become partially paralysed, after falling seriously ill in custody and being denied adequate medical care. “Right now, he is paralysed. He can no longer walk,” Shomin said. “He fell sick and couldn’t get proper treatment.”
In the past few years, there have been scores of deaths in custody in immigration detention centers due to untreated illnesses and medical neglect. Since mid-2024, the government has dramatically ramped up its campaign of immigration enforcement, resulting in a sharp increase in arrests, detentions, and deportations nationwide. Data compiled by Fortify Rights—drawing on parliamentary disclosures, official government statements, media reporting, and archived data from the Ministry of Home Affairs—shows that immigration-related arrests rebounded steeply after the COVID-19 pandemic and surged to their highest levels in more than a decade in 2025.
This intensified enforcement, which has been driven by large-scale, nationwide immigration raids targeting undocumented migrants and refugees, has significantly increased the population held in IDCs, exacerbating already overcrowded conditions and compounding risks of abuse, prolonged detention, and medical neglect.
Ill-Treatment and Inhuman and Degrading Detention Conditions
Malaysia is not party to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention or its 1967 protocol, and does not formally use the UNHCR refugee framework to determine refugee status. Malaysia’s primary legislation on immigration matters, the Immigration Act 1959/63, does not distinguish between undocumented migrants and refugees. Anyone who lacks a “valid entry permit” is considered an “illegal” or “prohibited” immigrant. Under Section 35 of the Act, police, immigration and other officers can arrest “without warrant” any person “reasonably believed to be a person liable to removal from Malaysia.”
Section 51 of the Immigration Act 1959/63 authorizes the detention of non-citizens at an immigration depot or other place designated by the Director General “until an opportunity arises to return him to his place of embarkation or to the country of his birth or citizenship.” The provision does not prescribe a maximum period of detention, nor does it establish a requirement for periodic judicial review of continued detention. In circumstances where removal is not reasonably foreseeable—such as in the case of Rohingya individuals, who are deemed stateless by Myanmar authorities—this statutory framework permits detention of indeterminate duration.
Furthermore, Section 59A(1) of the Immigration Act 1959/63 provides that “[t]here shall be no judicial review in any court of, and no court shall have or exercise any jurisdiction in respect of, any act done or any decision made by the Minister or the Director General under this Act,” except with respect to compliance with procedural requirements. This ouster clause restricts courts from examining the substance, reasonableness, proportionality, or duration of detention decisions, nor can individuals challenge the legality of the detention.
Since Malaysia has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, authorities do not formally recognize UNHCR cards as conferring legal status to cardholders. However, the Convention provides authoritative guidance on refugee protection under international law. Under the Convention, a refugee is defined as a person unable or unwilling to return to their country due to a well-founded fear of persecution. Article 31 of the Refugee Convention notes that refugees should not be penalized, including through arrest or detention, in relation to their irregular entry or stay in a country of asylum, recognizing the fact that individuals fleeing persecution cannot always obtain proper documentation or official authorizations.
Despite the lack of formal treaty ratification, Malaysia is still bound by international human rights obligations that prohibit arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, and the refoulement of individuals to countries where they may face persecution, violence, or other serious harm.
The DPP must lead to the immediate release of refugees from detention and end their criminalization for seeking safety, Fortify Rights said today.
“The widespread abuses and violations of the rights of legitimate refugees in Malaysia are a direct result of Malaysia’s unwillingness to sign and abide by the UN Refugee Convention, which sets out clear guidelines on recognizing and protecting refugees,” said Yap Lay Sheng. “Instead of tinkering with a migrant system already rife with abuse, Malaysia should abide by international legal standards and follow the U.N. Refugee Convention.”
