“Shoot Them”: Malaysia’s Anti-Rohingya Panic Reaches the Law Faculty

How a Malaysian law professor with a record in refugee law helped turn violence against Rohingya boats into the language of sovereignty

Jun 30, 2026

A Malaysian law professor built a substantial academic profile in refugee law, migration, non-refoulement and Rohingya protection issues. Then she went on television and normalised talk of shooting Rohingya boats.

Prof. Dr. Salawati Mat Basir is not a random commentator. She is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), the country’s national university. She holds her LLB, LLM and PhD all from UKM. She is UKM’s own Legal Advisor. She worked as a practising Advocate and Solicitor. She served as a post-conflict oﬃcer with UNCTAD, the United Nations trade body. She has received a state honour - the Darjah Setia Negeri Sembilan.

Her declared areas of academic expertise are Migration and Refugee Law, Public International Law, and International Development Law.

She co-researched and co-published a study titled “Isu Kemanusiaan: Kelangsungan Hidup Pelarian Etnik Rohingya Di Malaysia” — Humanitarian Issues: Survival of Rohingya Refugees in Malaysia.

She published on “ASEAN, Rohingya Refugees and Human Security.” She supervised PhD and Masters students on refugees. She has appeared at international conferences specifically on the legal aspects of statelessness and refugee protection as they apply to Rohingya.

She authored a paper titled “Non-refoulement and Right of Entry for Asylum-Seekers.” She published work on “The Role of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Protecting Refugee Children.”

To repeat, this is the professional biography of someone who built a substantial academic profile in migration, refugee law and international law.

A few days ago, Salawati appeared on a Malaysia Gazette programme, a podcast discussion on Rohingya arrivals titled “Rohingya Di Mana Nokhtahnya?” (Rohingya: Where Does It End?). The video is publicly available

In it, she described how neighbouring countries handle Rohingya boats. Thai and Indonesian coast guards, she said, have been shooting at them. Singapore coast guards, she said, “will definitely bomb the boats.” She then delivered a sarcastic verdict on Malaysia’s comparatively more restrained approach:

“Kita silap tak letak karpet merah kat laut tu. Karpet merah. Selamat datang ke Malaysia truly Asia.”

Translation: We were wrong not to lay a red carpet in the sea. Red carpet. Welcome to Malaysia, truly Asia.

The mockery was clear. Malaysia had been too welcoming. The red carpet comment was not a defence of the Rohingya - it was a contemptuous dismissal of any compassion extended to them.

Clip from Podcast: Malaysian refugee-law academic,Prof. Dr. Salawati Mat Basir repeats, without clear condemnation, talk of shooting Rohingya boats before they reach territorial waters.

The most serious moment came when she recounted military and security figures telling her: “Shoot. Shoot them. Don’t let them come into your territorial waters.” She did not condemn the idea. Instead, she integrated it into her own argument about sovereignty, security and defence.

Salawati made it clear this was not a passing remark. Her position, she said, is “jelas, tegas, takkan berubah” - clear, firm, will not change

Let’s analyse what this means.

Rohingya people boarding boats are, overwhelmingly, refugees fleeing genocide. Myanmar’s military carried out a campaign of mass killing, rape, and village-burning against the Rohingya that the UN Fact-Finding Mission described as acts bearing the hallmarks of genocide. Those who survive and attempt sea crossings do so in desperate, often unseaworthy vessels. Many die before they reach any coast.

The principle of non-refoulement, which Salawati has literally written about academically, exists precisely to prevent states from turning back people who face persecution. Even states that have not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, which Malaysia has not, are widely understood to be bound by this norm as customary international law.

That argument is not exotic fringe advocacy. It is the mainstream position in international refugee law scholarship. Salawati knows this. She has written about it.

The point is not that Salawati was ever a humanitarian saint. The point is that she knew the law, the language, and the stakes. AND still chose to speak in a way that made shooting, pushing back or bombing desperate people at sea sound like a reasonable expression of sovereignty.

She is not alone in the discussion, and the broader climate of anti-Rohingya sentiment in Malaysia provides the political context for why remarks like hers are made without apparent hesitation. The demonisation of Rohingya in Malaysian public discourse has accelerated in recent years. They are routinely described as invaders, criminals, demographic threats. The hostility is real, widespread, and politically convenient.

But, again, Salawati is not a street-level commentator swept up in a social media frenzy. She is a law professor at a national university whose expertise is refugee law. The standard that applies to her is diﬀerent, and the failure is correspondingly more acute.

In 2018 or 2019, I was speaking to a well-known Rohingya diaspora figure. He had just returned from a visit to Malaysia, where he had met various government officials. He told me: “Malaysians are cooking beef for the Rohingya” - meaning that Malaysia was about to do something significant for the community. I asked what he meant. He didn’t answer, retreating into that shell of privileged information that Rohingya spokespersons like to display from time to time.

I doubt he foresaw what dish Malaysia would eventually serve up.

That is a question worth exploring: where is Rohingya leadership in all of this? As a Malaysian law professor publicly signals that boats carrying their people should be violently pushed back, and does so firmly and with no intention of changing her position, the silence and organisational vacuum from those who claim to speak for the Rohingya is its own story.

A people can be failed by hostile states. They can also be failed by representation that confuses access with power and proximity to officials with protection.