Malaysia may be a multiracial country, with residents of various skin tones, but we still have a long way to go when it comes to our sense of racism and colourism towards locals and foreigners alike.
One Nigerian man recently shared some rather serious situations he faced during his trip to Malaysia to visit some friends, and honestly, it’s super concerning.
Suleiman took to his TikTok account to recount why he will never come to Malaysia again.
It all happened in 2016, when he was still a student. He was, by chance, in Asia, and decided to visit his 2 closest friend (who are Indian and Ugandan) who were in Malaysia at the time.
“I hadn’t seen them in like, 5 to 6 years, so I was like you know what, let me go and visit them,” he said, adding that he used the money he had saved up as a student for 1 and half years to make the trip.
He arrived in Kuala Lumpur with no problems and enjoyed a good 3 to 4 days with his friends there before they travelled to Sabah to island-hop.
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“In the plane, people were staring at us, like at the black people (him and his Ugandan friend), like they’ve never seen black people in their lives. That should have been our first clue,” he said.
And things only got worse from there
Upon arriving in Sabah, they had to go through immigration, which he pointed out was odd because it was a domestic flight.
The immigration officers then took him and his Ugandan friend to a separate room, just the 2 of them. After a while, the officers returned the passport of Suleiman’s Ugandan friend but told Suleiman that he couldn’t enter Sabah.
“He said and I quote ‘we do not allow your kind here‘.”
“I was like, okay, I don’t want any problems, I will go back to Kuala Lumpur, no big deal”, he said but the immigration officer then insisted he pay for his own ticket to be deported back to Kuala Lumpur.
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He obviously could not afford the ticket at the time as he was a student and they had purchased their tickets to Sabah 8 months prior to his trip while it was still affordable.
“I don’t have money to pay for another ticket to go back and he was like, ‘okay you know what, we will pay for you to go back’ as if he was doing me a favour.”
“And when it came time for me to leave, I was given a police escort back onto the plane to be sent back to Kuala Lumpur. My friends couldn’t afford to come back with me, so I was left alone by myself in Kuala Lumpur for like, 3 days,” he added.
Considering he was still on holiday, he decided to make the most of his time alone in Kuala Lumpur by checking out the city
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“BIG MISTAKE. When I was trying to go out, taxi cabs would refuse to stop for me in the streets because I was a black person, I went to restaurants and the wait staff would not take my order because they didn’t want to talk to a black person.”
“Listen, when I was finally leaving the country, on the queue to get onto the plane, 5 security agents in red gear surrounded me, started asking me questions, ‘where are you coming from, where are you going’, they took my passport off me and were flashing it with different lights to see whether my passport was fake. If I ever step foot in Malaysia again, my left kidney will shift,” he ended.
Hearing of his experience in Malaysia is truly disappointing for all he wanted to do was spend some time with his friends and visit our gorgeous country. But, unfortunately, racist Malaysians completely ruined his trip.
How can we expect to boost our tourism if we can’t even accept tourists from various countries?
You can check out the video here:
What do you think about this? Do feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section.
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