Ministry to get tough against Unregistered illegals and their Employers

After all the coaxing and the extensions, the Home Ministry is ready to get tough. It will embark on the biggest ever operation against illegal immigrants in the country from next week.

An estimated 1.3 million illegal immigrants failed to step forward under a special amnesty programme, codenamed 6P (Illegal Immigrant Comprehensive Settlement Programme), and the ministry will be going after them.

Employers harbouring such immigrants will also not be spared.
The programme involved six phases starting off with registration (Aug 1 to 31, 2011), amnesty, supervision, enforcement, deportation and legalisation.

The crackdown will start from the wee hours of Thursday, just hours after the close of the legalisation phase which kicked off on Oct 10.

Ministry secretary-general Tan Sri Mahmood Adam said more than four million personnel, including 2.8 million Rela members, 125,000 policemen and 110,000 army personnel, would be mobilised to track down the illegals.

MigranteCcondemns Crackdown on Migrants, Refugees in Malaysia

Global alliance of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and families Migrante International fully supports the Filipino community and migrant communities of other nationalities in Malaysia in their fight against intensified crackdowns on undocumented migrant workers.

The crackdown is a result of the Malaysian government’s Illegal Immigrant Comprehensive Settlement Programme (6P Programme, “6P”) which is in its final phase of implementation. Arrests, illegal detention and raids of undocumented migrants are being conducted by the Malaysian government in spite and despite of the extension of the deadline for the 6P declared by Secretary-General of Home Ministry Tan Sri Mahmood Adam.

Malaysia is one of the most common destinations of trafficked Filipino workers, mostly women, according to Migrante International. It is also one of the most common “transit points” of trafficked Filipinos on their way to other parts of Asia.

According to Migrante International chairperson Garry Martinez, they have received reports and urgent alerts from partner migrant organization in Malaysia, Tenaganita, that on February 11 a raid was conducted in Kuala Lumpur wherein between 100 to 200 migrants and refugees were arrested. Some were brought to detention cells while the others’ whereabouts are yet unknown.

တိုင္းရင္းသားဒုကၡသည္ ကူညီေရး ထိေရာက္စြာ ေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔ ကုလတိုက္တြန္း

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက ပဋိပကၡေတြျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ တိုင္းရင္းသားေဒသေတြမွာ စစ္ေဘးဒဏ္ခံေနရတဲ့ ေဒသခံေတြဆီ အကူအညီေတြ ထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္ ေပးအပ္နိုင္ဖို႔အတြက္ ၀ိုင္း၀န္းလုပ္ေဆာင္ၾကဖို႔ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံမွာ ၅ရက္ၾကာခရီးေရာက္ရွိေနတဲ့ ကုလသမဂၢအတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ရဲ႕ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ အထူးအၾကံေပးပုဂၢိဳလ္ Mr.Vijay Nambia က တိုက္တြန္းလိုက္ပါတယ္။ ဒီကေန႔ ခရီးစဥ္ရဲ႕ ၃ရက္ေျမာက္ေန႔မွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို တနဂၤေႏြေန႔ကတည္းက ေရာက္ရွိလာတဲ့ Mr.Nambia က ေနျပည္ေတာ္မွာ ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔နဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုတုန္း ခုလို တိုက္တြန္းသြားတာပါ။ အျပည့္အစံုကို မေအးသႏၱာေက်ာ္က ဆက္ေျပာျပပါမယ္။

Mr.Nambia ဟာ အဂၤါေန႔ေန႔လယ္ပိုင္းမွာ ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ဥကၠ႒ သူရဦးေရႊမန္း ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့  ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႔နဲ႔ ေတြ႔ဆံုေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ျပဳျပင္ေျပာင္းလဲေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္က ျဖစ္ေပၚတိုးတက္မႈေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ Mr.Nambia ကို ရွင္းျပခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ဒီေတြ႔ဆံုပြဲမွာ ပါ၀င္တဲ့ ျပည္သူ႔လႊတ္ေတာ္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ဆက္ဆံေရးေကာ္မီတီဥကၠ႒ ဦးလွျမင့္ဦးက ေျပာပါတယ္။

“က်ေနာ္တို႔ လႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ထြန္းကားေရးအတြက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတယ္။   ေကာ္မီတီေတြအေနနဲ႔လည္း ဖြဲ႔စည္းျပီး ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတယ္။ တရားဥပေဒနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔လည္း လိုအပ္တဲ့ ဥပေဒေတြ ျပ႒ာန္းဖို႔လည္း ေဆြးေႏြးေနတာရွိတယ္။ ဥပေဒေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ျပီး ျပင္ဆင္ရမယ့္ဥပေဒ ရွိတယ္။ အစားထိုးရမယ့္ ဥပေဒရွိပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ အသစ္ျပ႒ာန္းရမယ့္ ဥပေဒေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။ ဒါေတြကိုလည္ူ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတဲ့ဆိုတဲ့အေၾကာင္း ေျပာျပပါတယ္။”

Gross Attacks on Migrants & Refugees for Failures by the State

PRESS STATEMENT
22nd February 2012

       The recent status report given by the Home Ministry together with the new deadline for April 10 2012 reveals that out of the 1.3 million undocumented workers registered into the biometric system, 1 million or more still remain as undocumented workers with no work permits or permits rejected by the Immigration department.  It is indeed a clear sign of a program doomed to fail.
       The 6P program is hailed by the government as an effective means to resolve the problem of  ‘illegal migrants and workers’ in Malaysia. There are two problematic premises here: : Firstly, it places the burden of proof of her legality of stay in Malaysia on the migrant and refugee, who in actual fact has no control over existing legislation and labour practices that render him/her undocumented., Secondly, it reinforces the inhumane notion that any person without adequate administrative documents is not worthy of existing (illegal), and should be treated with the harshest of punishments, including torture (whipping), restriction of fundamental freedoms (detention) and forced return.
       The reality, however, is that in the case of migrant workers, through a system that facilitates corruption by agents and employers, institutionalized labour trafficking through the practice of outsourcing, and widespread cheating by recruitment agents, 80% of migrants become undocumented in Malaysia. The power to renew the work permit also lies with the employer or the agent, not the migrant, but the current enforcement and legal framework’ holds the migrant accountable when employers shirk their responsibilities.
In the case of refugees, an absence of a legal framework to recognize and protect refugees renders them ‘undocumented’. Almost 100, 000 refugees are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while tens of thousands more wait in line to seek asylum. Without any legislation or comprehensive policies to protect the rights of refugees, genuine asylum-seekers who have yet to be registered with UNHCR are treated as criminals who have breached Immigration laws; while in the case of registered refugees, enforcement officers arbitrarily either acknowledge or reject their UNHCR-issued documents.  In both instances, refugees in Malaysia are subjected to arrest, detention, even whipping and deportation (a violation of the international principle of non-refoulement). The State renders the refugee ‘undocumented’ – the State therefore must be held accountable, not the refugee. The Malaysian government is overdue in rectifying this institutionalized breach of human rights.

Refugees Fear Mass Deportation

       Refugees and asylum seekers have been allegedly sacked by their bosses with the introduction of the 6P amnesty programme, and they fear an impending crackdown.
       Myanmarese asylum seeker Patrick Sang claimed that local employers didn’t want to go through the trouble of registering this group with the Immigration Department.
       “Since the news of the major crackdowns and accompanying measures, many of the refugees and asylum seekers and their families have been fired by their bosses.”
       “They lost their jobs…because employers didn’t register them under the 6P programme,” he told reporters today at Tenaganita’s office.

Myammar Women Refugees Band Together To Help Each Other

MYAMMAR refugee Tanda Htun is no stranger to hardship. It has been six years since the 30-year-old Myammar woman fled the military regime back in her home country, and still she continues to live with fear and uncertainty. In Malaysia, Tanda has worked in restaurants and polished cars at a car wash, and she constantly worries about being arrested by the police again.

“I was a social worker in Myammar, promoting Mon culture. But the government doesn’t allow this, they don’t want you to practise your culture,” says Tanda.

Although Tanda lives with five other families in a small flat here, and is unsure of what her future holds, she says life here is still better than in Myammar.

Lighter and happier: Apar working the weaving loom with her six-month-old daughter.

Father Along - 3 Charming Sisters

ေနာ္ဘူေဘာ .... သံေတာင္ၾကီး

ကရင့္ရာဇ၀င္သမိုင္း

The "Four-Foot Colonel" Gen Saw Smith Dun ( 1906 - 1979 )

The "Four-Foot Colonel" Gen. Smith Dun ( 1906 - 1979 )

In 1946, during the World War II victory parade in London, Field Marshal William Slim and Col Smith Dun were having a conversation. Slim, the commander of the British-Indian forces that had recaptured Burma from the Japanese, turned to nearby reporters and jokingly introduced his companion: “This is Colonel Dun who is o¬nly four-feet tall,” he said. Ever since, Smith Dun has been known as the “Four-foot Colonel.”

The diminutive colonel—an ethnic Karen—received his training at the Indian Military Academy, where he won the first Sword of Honor (given to the best cadet in each year’s intake), and later helmed a contingent of Karen guerrilla forces from the Irrawaddy delta during World War II.

Smith Dun played a key role in the early years of Burma’s independence. He was appointed head of Burma’s armed forces and promoted to the rank of general in a move agreed to by ethnic parties and Burmese nationalists to foster confidence in a future Burmese union that would include all ethnic minority groups.

Mahn Win Maung, President of Burma in 1957

Mahn Win Maung was an ethnic Karen born on 17 April 1916 in the Irrawaddy delta, son of Daw Tharya and U Shwe Yin. He graduated with a B.A. from Yangon University's Judson College in 1937. Between 1947 and 1956 he was variously Minister of Ministry of Mining and Labour, Minister of the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunication and Minister of the Ministry of Water, Air and Costal Ship. He was imprisoned between 1962 to 1967. Mahn Win Maung died in 1989, 4july when he was 73 years old.

Karen Costumes

There are a lot of Karen dresses for Karen women. People weave white, green, blue, red, yellow, black long and short dresses with many different colors.

Karen people have many different types of traditions regarding dress. Costume is very important for us. Our costume is very pretty, they have dignity and many other ethnic nationalities like to wear it. All the costumes have different meanings. Our ancestors wanted other people to recognize us and they made a sign when they were weaving.

A long time ago there were no factories, people planted cotton, made the cotton to become thread and they always hand weaved it. Now there are many machines to produce clothes so many people have sadly, forgotten how to weave.

Karen Culture Wrist Tying Ceremony

(Contributed by Mahn Kyaw Swe)
"Before Buddhism or Christianity was introduced to the Karen people, our ancient ancestors and great grandmothers and grandfathers, lived in fear of different spirits. Therefore, our parents and grandparents used white thread, which they tied on the wrists of children after calling back their spirits. It meant that the person and one's spirit would stay together and could live free from fear," one of the participants explained in English to the visitors.

People who attend the wrist tying ceremony must wear full traditional costume. The ceremony could only be sponsored by an elderly couple who had lived together as husband and wife for their entire married life. This senior couple called upon the spirits of the children to come back from the place of darkness and to stay with parents, grandparents and relatives. The senior couple then prayed that the young children would behave themselves well, and act with good discipline and preserve our culture. There are seven materials are used for wrist tying ceremony:

1. A glass of cold water
2. Three white threads
3. Seven rice balls
4. Seven triangular-shaped lumps of sticky rice in the packages
5. Seven boiled bananas
6. Seven (Paw Woung) branches of flowers
7. Seven pieces of sugarcane

The Myaungmya Massacres

After the British retreat and in the wake of the Japanese invasion Burman officials immediately took over administering the predominantly Karen area of Myaungmya. One of their first actions was to release all the convicts from the local jail and within days the convicts were rampaging through the locality looting and robbing from the local Karen, Chinese and Indian communities.

The first BIA detachment, commanded by Bo Aung and Bo Myint, soon arrived in the area and, similar to BIA units in Papun, were primarily comprised of a number of young miscreants. Within days the unit had confiscated all weapons and had begun collecting money from the local villagers and government servants. In addition they also attempted to round up ex-British soldiers, mainly Karens, and under this pretext looted and stole as many possessions from the townspeople as they could. In a show of bravado the BIA arrested two Karens, supposedly on separate charges of rape and theft, and, outside the BIA Headquarters, bayoneted them to death before hacking the corpses to pieces.

Such actions were hardly designed to produce trust in the local community and soon there was a state of open communal warfare as the BIA tore through the district burning down Karen villages and in response to such actions the Karens retaliated by destroying Burman villages. The victims - innocent villagers - found themselves scattered throughout the countryside living in small shelters and scavenging for food.

Padoh Mahn Sha Lar Phan

WAKE UP MALAYSIA by Cobem Ethnics

            Tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers are at undue risk for arrest in the upcoming raids all over Malaysia. Saturday afternoon, February 11, at the beautiful Central Market in Kota Raya downtown Kuala Lumpur, while many tourists and locals shopped, more than 100 people (including illegal migrant workers, asylum seekers, and refugees) were arrested for illegally workin...g. Just twenty minutes after the arrests were finished, one looking at the market would never even have known that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. Onlookers must be unaware of the situation involving many of the arrested and the at risk individuals for arrest.

Need to be Next to You

Dr Ramasamy sues The Star; seeks RM10mil for defamation

KUALA LUMPUR: Penang Deputy Chief Minister II Dr P. Ramasamy has filed a RM10mil suit against a journalist of The Star and Star Publications (M) Bhd over two articles published last year.

Ramasamy filed the suit through lawyer A. Sivanesan, who is also Perak DAP vice-chairman, at the High Court Registry here on Monday.

He named journalist Ian McIntyre and the newspaper publisher as first and second defendants.

The former Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia professor claimed that on Dec 21, McIntyre interviewed him at his office in Komtar, Penang.

He said The Star had “in bad faith” published the article Distress in DAP Continues' on Dec 23, following the interview.

Dr Ramasamy said the article contained defamatory words which could mean that DAP leaders were corrupt, incompetent and that they abused their power and positions.

He said that on Dec 26, he held a press conference here denying the words allegedly uttered by him.