What Malaysia Isn’t Asking About Rohingya Boat Deaths

New Podcast Episode

This episode looks at how Malaysian media reported the recent Langkawi boat tragedy. Many headlines emphasised transnational criminal syndicates, police investigations, and cooperation with Interpol. That framing is not wrong, but it is profoundly incomplete.

The narrative shifts responsibility onto smugglers without asking how state policy contributed to the deaths.

WHAT THIS EPISODE COVERS

In this episode, I unpack how the New Straits Times and other Malaysian outlets report tragedies at sea by focusing on smuggler networks, criminal facilitation, and regional police coordination while avoiding basic questions like:

• Were Malaysian vessels tracking the boat before it capsized?

• Did authorities delay disembarkation?

• Were boats pushed back into deeper waters?

• Did non-assistance contribute to deaths?

These are not academic questions. In past cases, people have died after boats were refused entry or left drifting. The episode argues that focusing on “syndicates” without interrogating state roles turns a structural political crisis into a policing problem.

This allows humanitarian language to coexist with policies of deterrence.

Also, smuggling networks don’t appear out of nowhere. They exist because Rohingya cannot leave Bangladesh or Myanmar through legal routes, cannot seek asylum through formal channels, and cannot move freely inside Malaysia. When escape itself is criminalised, people pay for illegal passage because there is no alternative.

HOW THIS CONNECTS TO THE MAIN ARTICLE

This short episode is the immediate media analysis.

But the deeper argument - the ideological scaffolding behind this rhetoric - lives in my essay:

👉 Revisiting Malaysia’s “Respectable Deportations” of the Rohingya

That piece goes back to 2020 and CENTHRA’s call for “respectable, humane deportations,” a phrase that sounded compassionate but helped normalise refoulement and some sort of moralised removal.

(Substack will generate an automatic transcript once the audio uploads. I may replace it later with a verified manual transcript.)