Rohingya Refugees Keep Getting Framed By Fake News – Why Do We Keep Falling For It?

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Sometime in early June, a graphic began doing the rounds on Malaysian social media.

It carried the Malaysia Gazette logo, a photo of a man cradling a baby, and a headline claiming two million babies had been born in Malaysia from marriages between Malaysians and Rohingya refugees.

It racked up shares across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Comments piled up accusing Rohingya of gaming the system for citizenship, of draining public resources, of taking what wasn’t theirs.

A petition started circulating, calling for Rohingya refugees to be removed from the country entirely.

There was just one problem: none of it was real.

Malaysia Gazette had never published the graphic, and said as much themselves. The “two million” figure was, according to one expert consulted by AFP, mathematically impossible.

Malaysia doesn’t even have that many Rohingya refugees registered, let alone new babies from mixed marriages.

If that story sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve probably seen some version of it before.

View on Threads

A more recent example would perhaps be the report of a Rohingya mother, allegedly attempting to swap out her baby for another “quieter” infant. And as far as we could tell, there was nothing to back the story up.

The story appeared to have started as a random Threads reply on 18 June. It provided no proof, no verifiable details, just the kind of “I heard from my husband that his friend’s wife…” tale which then took on a life of its own.

Someone else picked up the story and repeated it on Threads, racking up over 15,000 Likes.

It then ended up as an article on some portals, and some Malaysians probably thought “it has a headline, it must be true”.

Most Malaysians Know How To Fact-Check… But Don’t

So why do claims like this spread so fast, and why don’t Malaysia’s usual defenses catch them?

A 2026 ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute study offers a clue.

Researcher Benjamin Loh interviewed 90 Malaysians and found that most people know, in theory, how to fact-check but say it’s too tiring to actually do on a daily basis.

Instead, they’ve built a workaround: when something looks off, they run it past a trusted WhatsApp group, a politically savvy friend, or simply watch how a comment section reacts before deciding whether to believe it.

It sounds reasonable… until the claim in question already matches what your circle expects to hear. This is something we all are prone to, called confirmation bias.

The grim reality is that only about 3 out of 10 Malaysians check whether the things they see online are true or not.

The Gap Seems To Matter More For Some Topics Than Others

Rohingya refugees appear to have become one of the most frequent targets of late, and analysts say that this is tied to a broader political campaign ahead of Malaysia’s next general election, on top of disinformation that’s circulated for years alongside Myanmar’s military crackdowns.

As Lilianne Fan, who heads the Secretariat of the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar, put it, refugees have become “a convenient proxy through which wider anxieties about the economy, migration, public services, security and national identity are channelled”.

The Rohingya, without recognition or protection from their home country, are among the least able to push back.

And the claims tend to follow a pattern – fake quotes, doctored videos and fabricated statistics accusing the community of exploiting benefits or resources they don’t deserve.

Here’s another example. In June, an image with a quote attributed to a “President Rohingya Malaysia” – “We don’t ask for much. Selayang is enough for us” – circulated widely on Facebook.

Except, again, it didn’t happen. There was no “President Rohingya Malaysia”, and the image appeared to have been generated using AI.

How Can We Educate Ourselves Better?

Right, we know this article’s gone on for a little longer than you’d like, but hear us out – you don’t need a journalism degree to spot disinformation online.

Here’s a quick and dirty rundown of some red flags to spot:

Red flags to watch for:

• No sources named: A real incident will likely include a statement by the police, news of an arrest, a police report, a ministry statement. Something more than just a netizen’s claims.
  
• Screenshots of screenshots: Claims that only exist as a reposted graphic or forwarded WhatsApp text, with no link to an original report, should raise suspicion.
  
• Weird numbers: This can go either way but numbers are sometimes used to simulate credibility.
  
• Content designed to appeal to emotions: Claims about certain groups “stealing,” “exploiting,” or “getting away with” something are built to trigger shares and engagement.

What to actually do before sharing:

• Search the claim itself. A quick Google search will more often than not prove or debunk a story.
  
• Check if any mainstream outlet or official body has covered it. Silence from legitimate news sources is telling.
  
• Reverse image search suspicious photos. A tool like Google Lens can show whether an image has been making the rounds.
  
• Check MCMC’s Sebenarnya.my or AFP Fact Check. Both regularly cover exactly this kind of viral claim.
  
• Give it a day. Genuinely urgent, confirmed news gets covered by multiple outlets fast.

At the end of the day, this stuff isn’t hard to do, it’s just whether we want to expend the effort and time. Taking some time before you comment or share makes a real difference.

Why don’t we prove Dr. Benjamin Loh wrong, and show that we are willing to fact-check, eh? (No shade, Dr. Big fan of your work)

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