Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military staged a coup in February 2021, which ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency (archived link), a wave of fighting in 2023 has led to more people fleeing to neighboring countries, including Malaysia.
But rights groups say Malaysian authorities often arbitrarily detain refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in squalid conditions (archived link). The country has not signed the UN Refugee Convention.
The video of people walking in a squat is also circulating alongside similar claims on Facebook here and here.
But it does not show Burmese citizens being held in Malaysia; instead, it shows people arrested for drug offenses in Indonesia.
Drug arrests in Indonesia
A reverse image search on Google found an identical video shared to TikTok on March 16, 2024, with the sticker text in Indonesian language reading “Does anyone know what happened to them” (archived link).
The video is captioned: “Say no to drugs.”
Below is the screenshot comparison of the video from the fake post (left) and the video shared on TikTok (right):
The user who posted the video told AFP that the video was recorded in March, after police raided a drug party.
“They were arrested after taking drugs at a party,” he told AFP.
The user regularly tags the official TikTok account of the police in Jambi, a city on the Indonesian island of Sumatra (archived links here and here).
Jambi police spokesperson Amin Nasution confirmed that the video was filmed at the Jambi Regional Police Station in March 2024 (archived link).
“Twenty-one people were arrested on charges of drug abuse. No foreigners were arrested, they were all Indonesians,” he told AFP.
