Change.org Has Put the Anti-Rohingya Petition Under Review. Now Remove It.
The racist petition demanding the “removal” of Rohingya refugees from Malaysia is now down and marked as under review by Change.org.
Good.
But it should never have taken this long.
By the time Change.org acted, the petition had gathered more than 420,000 signatures. That is not a small misunderstanding or ordinary civic concern. Nor was it a harmless call for better refugee policy. It was a mass campaign targeting a stateless, persecuted people who have nowhere safe to return.
The petition’s organisers tried to disguise bigotry through the language of resources, crime, public services and national security. They did not need crude slurs. They had a cleaner method. They framed Rohingya refugees as a burden on Malaysia, a threat to order, a pressure on public services, a danger to citizens. Then they wrapped the demand for removal in the language of “humane solutions” and “alternative solutions”.
That is how respectable racism speaks.
I wrote about this in my first Substack piece on the petition, arguing that it was not the opposite of hate speech but hate speech after it had learned the language of policy. The petition took a draconian demand - get rid of this unwanted minority - and dressed it up as administrative common sense.
Razia Sultana, the Rohingya human rights defender, then wrote a powerful guest post for Rohingya Refugee News. She reminded readers what “removal” means to Rohingya. It is not an abstract bureaucratic word. It carries the memory of burned villages, pushed-back boats, trafficking camps, Wang Kelian, and unmarked graves. Her warning was stark - when states and publics call Rohingya “illegal”, traffickers call them cargo.
Anyone who still doubts the racism behind the petition should look at the replies to my tweets here and here.
What they will find is not thoughtful concern about refugee policy. They will find contempt, dehumanisation, collective blame and open hostility towards Rohingya. They will find exactly the atmosphere that petitions like this help create - a climate in which people begin to imagine that an entire refugee community can be removed, cleared away, punished or taught a lesson.
That is why Change.org cannot pretend to be a passive noticeboard.
Its platform gave the petition visibility. It made it searchable, shareable and measurable. The signature count itself became part of the politics. Every new milestone gave the campaign more legitimacy and more momentum. It turned anti-Rohingya hostility into a scoreboard.
So I wrote to Change.org and asked for an urgent Trust and Safety review.
I made several points.
First, the petition targets Rohingya refugees as a group. It does not call for a specific policy reform. It calls for the collective “removal” of an ethnic refugee population.
Second, Rohingya are not ordinary migrants who can simply be sent “home”. They are a stateless people who have survived genocide, apartheid conditions in Myanmar, village burnings, forced displacement, trafficking, detention, sea pushbacks and the mass graves of Wang Kelian. To demand their removal without asking where they can safely go is a failure of basic humanity.
Third, the petition uses unsubstantiated claims about resources, crime and security to turn a vulnerable population into a public threat. That is not responsible public debate. It is scapegoating.
Fourth, Change.org’s role matters. The platform is not neutral when it hosts, amplifies and legitimises a campaign of this kind. It provides the infrastructure through which hatred is organised, counted and displayed.
Fifth, this is a foreseeable harm situation. The petition has generated intense online hostility. There are disturbing reports, still requiring verification, of possible vigilante mobilisation against Rohingya traders. Responsible platforms do not wait for violence before acting. They assess risk before people are harmed.
This is why the petition should not merely be “reviewed”. It should be removed permanently.
A petition does not become less racist because hundreds of thousands of people sign it. It becomes more dangerous. It invites people to mistake numerical force for moral authority. It tells a vulnerable minority that their existence in public life can be put to a vote.
Change.org has taken the first step. Now it should finish the job.
Remove the petition.
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