“I learned to read and speak in Bahasa Malaysia from my friends when we lived in a Malay village in Kemaman (Terengganu). I wanted to study more and become a policewoman but I never got the chance,” recalled 19-year-old Rohingya refugee Hamida Mohamed Yosuf.
Hamida is one of the 150,000 Rohingyas who call Malaysia home, their families having settled here after fleeing from persecution in Myanmar.
While they have managed to scrape together a semblance of life for themselves here, many yearn for the opportunities that education and legal recognition of their status would bring.
Malaysia’s public education system is one of the country’s success stories, chalking up a literacy rate of 90 percent. But Rohingya refugees, however long they may have been in the country, do not have access to government-funded schools. (Courtesy of Malaysiakini)
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