Malaysia / Myanmar - The State Self Returns the Persecuted Other to Its Persecutor, Proving the Illusion of Sanctuary

Event Baseline: Malaysia announced plans to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, where they fled military rule, civil war, and religious persecution. The announcement has caused panic among the Rohingya community in Malaysia.

The Malaysian state identifies with its own imagined national body and sees the Rohingya as a contaminant. This is the same mechanical logic that drives Myanmar's genocide: the belief that 'we' are separate from 'them' and that our security requires their removal. Malaysia refuses to hold the suffering other, not because of capacity, but because the self cannot tolerate the presence of a living mirror of persecution. The border becomes a wall of denial. The same illusion of tribal separation allows the persecutor to kill and the bystander to expel. There is no sanctuary in a world divided by thought.