Arson attack kills two RI workers

Arson attack kills two RI workers

Agencies, Kuala Lumpur

Two Indonesian immigrant workers were burnt to death and five others injured when their makeshift home was set ablaze by unidentified assailants, Malaysian police said Sunday.

The Indonesians were believed sleeping when the incident occurred late Friday at a construction site on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, a district police spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

The Sunday Star newspaper identified the dead men as Asturi Rasit, 46, and Abdul Rasid Mohamad, 58, and said five others were recovering from third-degree burns.

The Indonesians were said to have been involved in a quarrel with local residents several hours before the fire.

Police said they were still investigating the case and no arrests had been made.

Malaysian authorities have routinely conducted swoops on illegal immigrants, deporting thousands in one go at times. But the latest operation, following a series of violent incidents involving mainly Indonesians, has a greater sense of urgency.

Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia's wealthiest nations, has around two million foreign workers employed in factories, plantations and construction sites, and as domestic servants.

More than half of these people are illegal and Malaysia, with its 23 million people, fears being overrun by those fleeing the poverty and violence among its more populous neighbors.

Authorities have deported 15,037 Indonesians and 1,352 Myanmar nationals in the first two months of the year. This week alone nearly 700 Indonesians were sent back, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, Jani Rahman shrugged when asked where his family, including his one-year-old daughter, had been spending its nights since a bulldozer flattened their home in the Malaysian capital's oldest Indonesian settlement.

"Where else? Here," he said, pointing to one of the two playswings outside his mowed-down home which now serve as a crude wardrobe for his clothes by the day and a bed under the stars for his wife and two children at night.

Jani is an Indonesian with permanent resident (PR) status in Malaysia, caught on the wrong side of a government campaign to drive out hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, made up mostly of his countrymen.

Authorities have also detained nearly 8,000 Indonesians and Filipinos and have torn down more than 3,000 of their homes in the eastern Sabah state on the island of Borneo, which has one of the biggest illegal immigrant populations in Malaysia.

In a sign it will get even tougher, the government has proposed whipping and stiffer fines and jail terms for illegals in amendments underway to immigration laws. Those who surrendered now would get amnesty, it said on Tuesday.

The house Jani built 12 years ago in Kampung Sungai Kayu Ara, Kuala Lumpur's oldest Indonesian squatter colony, was demolished on Wednesday with nearly 400 other units illegally constructed in the poor village, shadowed by posh buildings in the affluent Petaling Jaya suburb fringing the capital.

Since then, he and his family have been sleeping in the open with their prized possessions -- comprising everything from a pair of sneakers to a refrigerator and stove -- around them until they move to a new place. When it rains, they rush to a nearby builder's shed filled with construction tools and materials.

"I've found a new house to rent but we can only move in at the end of the month," he said, watching his wife feed their daughter and their 12-year-old son bathing under an open water pipe just a few hundred feet away from the bulldozers at work.

Jani -- who has lived in Malaysia for 21 years, carries a local identity card, and works as a driver with a delivery company -- is not new to government crackdowns on Indonesians.

He is quite sure the municipal workers who tore down his house might have shown more mercy if not for the government edict against illegal immigrants breathing down their necks.

Jani's neighbor, Ahmad Wahid Ahmad, an Indonesian with a work permit, also felt he was a victim of circumstance. "I built my own illegal home because I can't afford to pay rentals elsewhere. When you demolish that, where do I go?"

Officials have also said they will not easily grant PR status to Indonesians anymore, after police revelations that the fugitive leaders of a group of suspected Islamic militants arrested recently were Indonesians with permanent residency.