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| | Burmese refugees 'treated like a commodity' | | Marina Litvinsky | Apr 25, 09 12:07pm | The mistreatment of Burmese migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Malaysia is the focus of a report released on Thursday by the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
 After receiving disturbing reports of trafficking in 2007, committee staff conducted a year-long review of the allegations.
The report, "Trafficking and Extortion of Burmese Migrants in Malaysia and Southern Thailand," is based on first person accounts of extortion and trafficking in Malaysia and along the Malaysia-Thailand border.
Committee information comes from experiences of Burmese refugees resettled in the United States and other countries.
Many Burmese migrants, escaping extensive human rights abuses perpetrated by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and the Burmese military junta, travel to Malaysia to register with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for resettlement to a third country, according to the report.
Once in Malaysia, Burmese migrants are often arrested by Malaysian authorities, whether or not they have registered with the UNHCR and have identification papers. Burmese migrants are reportedly taken by Malaysian government personnel from detention facilities to the Malaysia-Thailand border for deportation.
Upon arrival at the Malaysia-Thailand border, human traffickers reportedly take possession of the migrants and issue ransom demands on an individual basis.
Migrants state that freedom is possible only once money demands are met. Specific payment procedures are outlined, which reportedly include bank accounts in Kuala Lumpur to which money should be transferred.
It has become commonplace for the authorities to use the vigilante Rela force to periodically arrest and "deport" Rohingyas, a Muslim minority. But since Burma does not recognise them as citizens, the practice is to take them to the Bukit Kayu Hitam area on the Thai-Malaysia border and force them to cross over into Thailand.
Activists claim officials 'trading' Rohingyas
Migrants state that those unable to pay are turned over to human peddlers in Thailand, representing a variety of business interests from fishing boats to brothels.
Human rights activists have long charged that immigration, police and other enforcement officials, have been "trading" Rohingyas to human traffickers in Thailand who then pass them on to deep sea fishing trawler operators in the South China Sea.
 "People seeking refuge from oppression in Burma are being abused by Malaysian government officials and human traffickers," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
The committee has received numerous reports of sexual assaults against Burmese women by human traffickers along the border.
One non-profit organisation official states that: "Most young women deported to the Thai border are sexually abused, even in front of their husbands, by the syndicates. No one dares to intervene as they would be shot or stabbed to death in the jungle." Women are generally sold into the sex industry.
"(The Burmese refugees) are treated as a commodity and frequently bought and sold and we have been condemning this practice for a long time," Irene Fernandez, executive director of Tenaganita, a non-profit group that protects migrant workers, told IPS in January.
"Our demands have always fallen on deaf ears despite the accumulating evidence of the involvement of uniformed officials in the trade."
The report, the first of three, states that Malaysia does not officially recognise refugees, due in part to concern by the government that official recognition of refugees would encourage more people to enter Malaysia, primarily for economic reasons. Also, Malaysian officials view migrants as a threat to Malaysia’s national security.
'Illegal immigrants are enemy No. 2'
"Malaysia does not recognise key international agreements on the protection of refugees and foreign nationals. Nor does it apply to foreign migrants the same rights and legal protections given to Malaysian citizens," Fernandez said.
 Foreign labour is an integral building block of Malaysia’s upward economic mobility. While Malaysia’s total workforce is 11.3 million, there are approximately 2.1 million legal foreign workers and an additional one million illegal workers, though no accurate information is available.
While Malaysia accepts the presence of Burmese and others from outside of the country for the purpose of contributing to the workforce, persons identified as refugees and asylum seekers on their way to a third country are viewed as threats to national security.
In an interview with The New York Times, Rela’s director-general, Zaidon Asmuni, said: "We have no more communists at the moment, but we are now facing illegal immigrants. As you know, in Malaysia, illegal immigrants are enemy No. 2."
Many of the approximately 40,000 Burmese refugees who have resettled in the United States since 1995 have come via Malaysia.
In August 2008, committee staff met separately with officials in Malaysia’s immigration department and the prime minister’s office, to convey the committee’s concern regarding the extortion and trafficking allegations.
Immigration director-general Datuk Mahmood Bin Adam and long-time immigration enforcement official Datuk Ishak Haji Mohammed denied the allegations of mistreatment against Burmese migrants at the hands of immigration and other Malaysian officials.
Police has started investigation
As reported recently in the Star: "Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar also denied claims that thousands of illegal foreigners held at detention centres were ‘being sold off’ to human trafficking syndicates.
“I take offence with the allegation because neither the Malaysian government nor its officials make money by selling people.”
 However, according to the report, on April 1, 2009, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan stated that an investigation has been launched.
The flow of refugees from Burma to Thailand, Malaysia and other countries has cost Burma’s neighbours millions of dollars in food and humanitarian assistance.
The committee calls on officials of impacted Asean countries to measure the financial cost of hosting refugees displaced from Burma, and to request financial compensation from Burma’s military junta for costs incurred in caring for the refugees.
It asks the government of Malaysia to address the trafficking, selling and slavery of Burmese and other migrants within Malaysia and across its border with Thailand.
As a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw), Malaysia is urged to consider alternatives to detention for refugees and asylum seekers, especially for women and children.
"Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak should act on this US Senate report to protect the rights of refugees and victims of human trafficking," said HRW’s Pearson.
The report advises the US, in coordination with other donor countries, to continue providing funds to facilitate sharing of information on human trafficking among authorities of Thailand and Malaysia; and to provide technical and other assistance to the governments of Malaysia and Thailand so that the trafficking of Burmese and other migrants may be more actively pursued and prosecuted.
- IPS |
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| This short film is one of the most viewed online, and it won the most popular short film award at the56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006.
Well worth watching. http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/1081/Chicken-a-la-Carte
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| Yes, its written by Ku Li :) You can click here for a direct link to the original article.
Chow Kit razaleigh.com (Mar 15, 2009) I have fallen a little behind with my blog. People have been asking me what I think of the so-called Second Stimulus Package. What I have to say about it can wait a little while longer. My comments would do little to lift the dismay of our citizens and business people with a package as puzzlingly weak, and directionless, as it is large. Last Thursday I visited Rumah Nur Salam, a centre for homeless children in KL’s Jalan Chow Kit area. Rumah Nur Salam is founded and led by the indefatigable Dr Hartini Zainudin, the daughter of a dear departed friend of mine. I spent some time with the children and toured the centre, which is, as its name implies, a haven of peace in a very troubled area. Here, in Chow Kit, in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, less than a kilometre from the Twin Towers and a stone’s thrown from PWTC, life is cheap, drug users shoot up in the back alleys and children wander the streets hungry. Infants are bought and sold by syndicates, young children are supplied for prostitution and child-pornography. Hundreds of children are on the streets or homeless. They beg and hustle and sell themselves for sex. They are runaways or abandoned or neglected children, vulnerable to STD and HIV, to drug addiction and to rape and murder. Many among them have no registration papers. Although they may have been born to Malaysian parents they are “stateless” and therefore ineligible for free inoculation, medical education or education. They are abused and traded with impunity by criminals and corrupt officials because when they disappear it is without trace. They are nobody’s constituency. Homeless children and street children in Malaysia number in the tens of thousands. They are in Chow Kit, but also in Dengkil, Jinjang, Pantai Dalam, Kepong, Selayang, Subang Jaya, Petaling Street and Pudu and in the bigger towns across the country. In Sabah and Sarawak, the problem of stateless children is acute. I sat down to listen to a small circle of community leaders, social workers and volunteers. Some worked with these children. Others worked with other “at risk” groups such as prostitutes, drug users and transsexuals. What these groups have in common is that they are rejected by society. Many of the leaders come from the very groups they now serve. Having picked themselves up, they immediately felt called to give back to others. The work they do is more than a job. It is a full-time commitment around which they have shaped their lives. Some have served here for decades, walking daily up and down streets that the police recently considered “too unsafe” to keep a beat base open in. They told me of a set of linked issues: poverty, bigotry, crime, social breakdown and bureaucratic indifference. They spoke about government that could not join the dots between ministries to help people, and of announcements of assistance that amounted to nothing. Having served a constituency in the depths of Kelantan for forty years, I have seen my share of poverty, but urban poverty is brutal. The family unit is broken. Women and children are left to fend for themselves. The weak are prey to the strong. People are bought and sold like things. Chow Kit holds up a mirror to our society. It is an image we would rather not see. The way we treat the weakest among us places the worth of our entire society in the balance. In God’s sight this weighs more than all the wealth we could accumulate. There is another sense in which urban poverty test us. It is the weathervane of our social and economic ills. Since December, the number of abandoned children has risen dramatically. For the children freshly abandoned to the street, and for their parents, the recession occurred more quickly, and undeniably, than for our leaders. Behind the evasive and woolly talk we have had about growth figures and fiscal stimuli are the absolutely tangible consequences of our policy decisions in the lives of ordinary people. Economic management, or the lack of it, has disproportionate consequences on the life-prospects of the most vulnerable members of our society. I came away humbled by the visit. The quiet, day by day heroism of the community leaders and volunteers working to make a difference in Chow Kit was a lesson in leadership as service. I am grateful for all that they and the children shared with me with such open hearts.
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| ..and I think a lot of us don't either, but did any of us ever wonder about the Chin Fellowship that meets at our Jalan Imbi Chapel? I have to give some background to how I got on this topic. A year and a half ago (2007), when I was last back on holiday, some of you may know that I worked at YMCA KL in Brickfields part-time. While I was there I noticed everyday, a stream of 'foreign workers' who came in and seemed to be 'attending' classes upstairs. From my colleagues at the Y, I soon learnt that all those 'foreign worker' looking people were actually Myanmar refugees attending 'orientation classes' as it were, provided by the UNHCR because they were about to be resettled in America or some other European country since Malaysia is not a signatory of the UN treaties on refugees and therefore refugees cannot be settled here. No doubt they need it--even I, with my good English, needed time to get used to America. For some background on why some Burmese, particularly the ethnic Chins, are refugees here in Malaysia, please read the BBC country profile of Burma (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1300003.stmarticles) and particularly this BBC article on the plight of the Chins (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7855179.stm). Well, I had no idea that the Chins at JIC were refugees, and I guess most of us didn't know either. I thought they were legal foreign workers trying to earn a living here. And I had no idea that part of the reason for their refugee status was persecution for being Christian, as well as Chin. A few weeks back (I can't find the article now, but it was in a weekend edition of The Star), I came across a newspaper article about Chin children and their status as refugee children in limbo. Not being Malaysian, Chin children cannot go to school. Afraid of being harassed by police, they cannot go out (there is a long and sad tale of how our local authorities have mistreated foreign nationals, not just Burmese). So the children are taught by members of their own community in little 'home schools'. Reading this, I began to wonder if the little kids we see every Sunday were the subject of this article. I had never tied what I saw at the YMCA to what I saw at Jalan Imbi, and I'm beginning to wonder why i never thought to do that. Doing a little research on the Internet, I came across articles on Chins in Malaysia. Here are some of them: http://crcmalaysia.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-new-year-2009.html / http://www.crcmalaysia.blogspot.com/ http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,463af2212,47fa2a362,47a6eeb81e,0.html http://burmalibrary.org/docs3/NowheretoGo.doc I've tried to cite reputable sites, but I included the burmalibrary document (although I'm not certain where it comes from) because 1) its a comprehensive summary and 2) it mentions the Jalan Imbi area and the Chin Fellowship quite specifically. I don't know why, but I felt like I needed to post this, to help clear up some of our misconceptions. This is all based on just a quick Internet research, and I'm sure there's a lot more that I'm missing out. Please post and discuss, if you know more about this than me! I just hope this helps us consider with more understanding, our Burmese brothers and sisters that we meet practically every week. [Addendum: after a bit more searching, I finally came across the Star article on theStar online! Please go to this link to read the full story titled 'Learning Haven': http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2009/2/2/lifefocus/2813540&sec=lifefocus I may post the article to this site later] | | |
| I guess its waaaay overdue for an update--I'm back in Kay-El and I'm actually pretty amazed, even my brother has jumped in on the blogging scene. So time for a very quick rundown on 'where have you been?' First, May 31, 2008: Graduation 
June: The Boston Celtics beat the LA Lakers! and the Red Sox had won the World Series earlier--it was a good year for Boston sports teams...and I couldn't pass up going to see the Celtics parade  
July: Internship on a prairie 
Sept: Back in the Boston area (no pictures--sorry! at this point I was camera-less) Dec: Christmas at Common House 
2009.... | | |
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