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.
Thursday, 23 February 2012
MigranteCcondemns Crackdown on Migrants, Refugees in Malaysia
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။”
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.
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
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.
“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.
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| Lighter and happier: Apar working the weaving loom with her six-month-old daughter. |
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