Now, he has limited access to affordable public healthcare, or to legal jobs.

“Refugees always become the victims of exploitation. (We have) no opportunity to access formal education for our children, even facing discrimination in private schools.”

Renting a house is also a big challenge as a refugee, he added.

This member of the Rohingya community was detailing his experience living in Malaysia as a refugee and the difficulties they face daily.

Speaking anonymously at a Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) press conference on the continued dehumanisation of Rohingya people, the refugee said he had made the decision to flee his home country nine years ago when his life was at risk.

That was back in 2012.

“My only wish is to have a safe place in my life as I have experienced enough xenophobia, injustice, human-to-human discrimination, traumatic harassment and all forms of violence in my entire life in Myanmar,” he said.

While he was grateful that Malaysia had accepted him as a refugee, he felt life here was bad for the refugees too.

As refugees, they were also subjected to racial discrimination, xenophobic sentiment, social exclusion, cyberbullying, harmful behaviours and “many other forms of dehumanisation”.

“Unfortunately, I came to understand that we refugees are seen as a burden on the country. I am committed to resettling in another country or to return to my home country, whenever possible.”

Ending his message, he reminded the public that all refugees were capable of making a difference for the better, if given the opportunity to succeed.

“We Rohingya, including those who are in Malaysia, feel that we are being forgotten and excluded from the world’s attention.”

Tomorrow marks four years since the Myanmar military drove more than 730,000 Rohingya people from Rakhine to neighbouring Bangladesh.

MSF representative for Bangladesh, Natàlia Torrent, said they worried for the Rohingya community’s mental well-being, especially the younger generation who were either born in refugee camps or displaced as children.

Citing a psychologist’s observations from an MSF hospital in Bangladesh, Torrent said the refugees were no longer speaking about the traumatic events from 2017.

Instead, they were now talking about their present living conditions in the camps, where the infrastructure was deteriorating and causing stress, anxiety as well as “depressive-like symptoms”.

She added that MSF had seen more than 15,000 refugee patients receiving mental health consultations within the first half of this year.