Undocumented Migrants are not Cockroaches
One would have been forgiven to think that the newspapers were writing about an operation to rid the country of cockroaches or some other vermin: “No place to hide”; “…will be hunted down…”; “to flush out unwanted foreigners”…
Dr Kua Kia Soong, SUARAM Adviser
The hypocrisy and injustice of the on-going mass operation against undocumented migrants has been accompanied by the most unfortunate use of language by the mainstream press in this campaign. One would have been forgiven to think that the newspapers were writing about an operation to rid the country of cockroaches or some other vermin: “No place to hide”; “…will be hunted down…”; “to flush out unwanted foreigners”…
The hypocrisy of this mass operation is exposed when we are reminded of “Project IC”, when foreigners were given identity cards so they could vote in elections. The existence of seafront ghettoes all along the Sabah coastline has come about through the connivance of the authorities especially when the government was providing training for the Muslim insurgents who were fighting the Marcos regime. The numbers of undocumented migrants in the peninsula have varied according to the political will of the government. Employers have also made use of migrant labour as it has suited them.
The injustice of the current mass operation is seen in the failure of the government’s “Illegal Immigrant Comprehensive Settlement (6P) Programme to properly register migrants. Consequently, there are those whose work permits are pending renewal; others who have been cheated by the companies tasked by the government to register the migrants. There are also migrants whose work permits have been terminated by their employers because they have brought cases in the Labour Tribunal or the courts. Tenaganita has also reported cases of government-approved companies that have outsourced the dispensing of work permits to “shell companies” which have cheated the migrant workers.
The Malaysian Immigration Act 1959/63 does not differentiate between migrants and refugees. Unlike migrants, refugees and asylum seekers have a well-founded fear of persecution in their homeland; hence they flee their country of origin and cannot return home. The principle of non-refoulement in Article 33 (1) of the 1951 Refugee Convention states that: “No Contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
After 56 years of independence, it is sad that our government has not imbibed the culture of human rights, nor has our mainstream press learnt to use humane language. How ironical that the South African president Zuma should be given a honorary doctorate for humanity (sic) by a local university after South African police had only recently shot dead more than 30 striking miners at Lonmin platinum mine.
