Jabatan Pendaftaran Malaysia denies the existence of a large statelessness problem
Jabatan Pendaftaran Malaysia denies the existence of a significant statelessness problem among the Indian poor as it would tantamount to acceptance of UMNO’s responsibility for causing it in the first place.
By Naragan
The Director of Births, Deaths and Adoptions, En Azmin, said in our meeting with him on the 13th of August that out of 84 outreach events they had organized, only 80 Indian stateless poor applicants had shown up. He is implying that there is no big statelessness problem in the country among the Indian poor.
Then we would like him to explain the following:
1) Without launching any campaign, but by word of mouth over a month’s period, we (Hindraf/HRP) were able to bring together over 40 such stateless people from around the Penang area on the 5th of September– see the video below. How is it we are able to do it so easily when JPN says these people do not exist.
2) Many of these same people would have been in the vicinity of the JPN outreach events; yet the JPN campaign could not get through to them. What is the effectiveness of JPN’s campaigns? Do they represent the real world out there? Are the JPN campaigns really designed to be effective or is it just activity to show that something is being done or does it just reflect the competence of the JPN?
3) If we extrapolate what we saw in Penang last weekend throughout the country, especially into the interior and smaller towns we believe the problem is much much more acute. And the problem affects at least two generations of the Indian poor – the generation that got pushed out from the estates into urban slums in the 70s and 80s and the generation of their off-springs. The problem has clear historical roots. The JPN has however concluded rather hastily that the problem arises because of ignorance of the law, unregistered marriages and domestic problems. They do not want to accept that this problem could be a direct result of past UMNO policies that caused exactly the conditions – ignorance of the law, unregistered marriages and domestic problems, that they now give as causes of the problem. Why after so many years do they still have this superficial understanding?
Hindraf/HRP’s standpoint is that it is not in UMNO’s interest at all to understand the historical nature of the problem – that their race-based development policies is what has caused this problem. Taking action based on this paradigm would be tacit acceptance of UMNO’s responsibility for causing the problem in the first place. They rather let the problem fester and become endemic. UMNO still indulges in this kind of regressive petty politics instead showing leadership and addressing the problem squarely. Bloody shame! Bloody shame. What a country we are becoming!
Hindraf/HRP is not going to get off UMNO’s back till it takes ownership for this problem. This problem of statelessness of the Indian poor must be eliminated and it must be done now. If the UMNO government picks up enough will, it can eliminate the problem in 3 months.
We will persist till we see an end to this problem of statelessness.
The video of the September the 5th of 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpUc9_J-G1s
