Activists Warn Malaysia Crackdown May Sweep Up Refugees

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-j On Sep 4, 2013

Malaysia’s Home Minister has promised that the crackdown on illegal immigration will be sensitive, and that immigrants who qualify for legal papers will be processed. He is encouraging immigrants to work directly with government officials and not with middlemen who could exploit them.

Kate Woodsome, VOA

Labor and human rights activists are warning that asylum seekers and refugees may get swept up in Malaysia’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants and that the country is not equipped to handle them properly.

Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has promised the nationwide operation to detain and deport as many as half a million foreigners will follow international standards. But Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch says Malaysia is far from being in line with such standards.

“Malaysian law doesn’t recognize refugee status. There’s no actual provision for status for refugee in immigration law, and unfortunately what that means is that the Malaysian government really has an open field in front of it,” Robertson, the deputy director of the group’s Asia Division, said Tuesday from Chiang Mai, Thailand.

There are more than 100,000 refugees registered in Malaysia, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The majority of them are ethnic Burmese minorities who say they have fled persecution back home.

Urban refugees

The men, women and children are known as “urban refugees” because there are no special camps for them. They live in low-cost housing scattered across the country, making it difficult to distinguish refugees from other migrants who may or may not be in the country legally.

“These people are in many cases in places where this crackdown is going to come,” said Robertson. “So they’re going to be sweeping up refugees in addition to undocumented workers.”

More than 2,000 immigrants were rounded up on the first day of the operation on Sunday, about a quarter of the people whose papers were examined, according to the Home Ministry. Indonesian, Burmese, Bangladesh and Nepalese nationals made up most of those detained.

Burmese labor activists in the country say migrants are nervous about what seems to be a chaotic process.

“There’s widespread arrests in factories, industrial zones and in the cities,” activist Aung Gyi reported from Kuala Lumpur. “They target areas where foreigners live. In the area known as Myanmar village where a lot of Burmese are living, they have arrested Burmese who have UNHCR documents, legal work permits, and also illegals.”