A video of people being made to walk in a squatting position after being arrested in Indonesia has circulated on Facebook alongside false claims it shows Burmese citizens being mistreated by police in Malaysia, where authorities are known to arbitrarily detain and mistreat undocumented migrants. Indonesian police confirmed the 21 people in the video were arrested for drug abuse.
“Look how the Malaysian police treat PDF and NUG supporters arrested in Malaysia,” read the Burmese-language caption of a Facebook post on May 29, 2024, referring to anti-junta resistance groups in Myanmar, including the People’s Defence Force (PDF) and the National Unity Government (NUG).
The accompanying video showed a group of men walking in a squatting position, as onlookers laugh at them.
Burmese-language text superimposed on the video reads: “Treatment of Malaysian police toward PDF and NUG supporters.” It also features the logo of the pro-junta “MHT News”.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military staged a coup in February 2021 that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically-elected government.
A surge in fighting in 2023 has prompted more people to flee to neighbouring countries, including Malaysia, according to the UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency (archived link).
But rights groups say Malaysian authorities often arbitrarily detain refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in squalid conditions (archived link). The country is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention.
The video of people walking in a squat has also circulated alongside similar claims on Facebook here and here.
But it does not show Burmese citizens detained in Malaysia — it in fact shows people arrested for drug offences in Indonesia.
Drug arrests in Indonesia
A reverse image search on Google found an identical video shared on TikTok on March 16, 2024, which featured Indonesian-language sticker text that read “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 false post (left) and the video shared on TikTok (right):
The user who posted the video told AFP it was filmed in March, after the police raided a drug party.
“They were arrested after doing drugs at a party,” he told AFP.
The user regularly tags the official TikTok account of the police force in Jambi, a city in Indonesia’s Sumatra island (archived links here and here).
Jambi police spokesperson Amin Nasution confirmed the video was filmed at Jambi regional police station in March 2024 (archived link).
“Twenty-one people were arrested on charges of drug abuse. No foreigners were arrested, all of them were Indonesian,” he told AFP.
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