A small group are busy finding shells and collecting them to present to their teacher. All of the children are Rohingya refugees. Some were born in Malaysia, and others arrived by boat after fleeing persecution and violence in Myanmar. Arafat Mohammad supervises his students with a smile. He recalls that it was not so long ago that they were all too afraid to step onto the sand, let alone wade into the water. “The children used to be so frightened when they saw the sea. They always heard from their parents that the sea is dangerous, the sea is where their relatives died during their boat journeys,” Arafat said. “So the children have trauma. They believe that if they go to the beach, they will die. By coming here, I am trying to show them the beach is where they can play, and the sea is not only a place of death.”

Arafat arrived in Langkawi in 2013. He had been working as a teacher in Myanmar. “By 2012, the Burmese military had already set fire to many of the villages where Rohingya people lived. They were doing it systematically, what they called ‘cleansing the villages’,” he said. “People were so frightened. In front of our eyes, babies were killed. Women were raped.” Arafat said he had been involved in assisting victims of sexual assault by the military to report their situation to nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and request medical treatment. As a result of his involvement with humanitarian organisations, he said he was targeted by the military. “The military surrounded my house, they took everything, even my books,” he said. Arafat left Myanmar by boat. When he arrived in Malaysia, he found informal work in the hotel sector. But he soon felt compelled to begin teaching once again after realising the Rohingya children in his new community had no access to education.