Deported Filipinos sail home, Malaysia slammed
Deported Filipinos sail home, Malaysia slammed
Agencies, Bongao, Philippines
About 1,500 Filipinos, looking gaunt and famished, sailed home
from Malaysia on Thursday as protests erupted in Manila over
reports of infant deaths in Kuala Lumpur's crackdown on illegal
immigrants.
Activists torched pictures of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
and burned the Malaysian flag after reports that several infants
had died of malnutrition and dehydration while in detention camps
in the eastern state of Sabah or on the way home.
A grave-faced President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo mingled with
the latest batch of deportees, offering words of sympathy as they
arrived aboard a Philippine Navy ship on the remote southern
island of Bongao after a night-long trip from Sabah.
When relief workers climbed aboard the ship with boxes of
boiled rice and sardines, the children among the deportees
swarmed around them and grabbed the boxes, as though they had not
eaten for days, witnesses said.
"I will never go back to that place (Sabah). I do not want to
suffer again," housewife Minang Asan told Reuters, saying the
Sabah police forced her to walk like a duck during her five
months in detention for allegedly holding a fake passport.
The deportees were the latest in a wave of illegals expelled
by Malaysian authorities after Kuala Lumpur cracked down on an
estimated 600,000 undocumented migrants in that country.
Arroyo told reporters she planned to send former president
Fidel Ramos to Malaysia to discuss the migrants problem with
Mahathir "so that the remaining deportations will be smoother".
Anger over the expulsion was inflamed on Thursday by a Manila
newspaper report that 13 Filipino infants had died in detention
camps on Sabah and on ships bringing the immigrants back home.
Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman told reporters only
three of the children had died during the crackdown. The others
died before the crackdown began, she said.
In Malaysia, a senior Sabah minister said accusations that the
Filipinos were poorly treated by Malaysian authorities during
deportation could be a ploy by Filipino politicians.
"Perhaps they are facing problems in taking back their
citizens. So they raised other issues," the national Bernama news
agency quoted state Finance Minister Musa Aman as telling
reporters in the state capital Kota Kinabalu.
A senior official said on Thursday Malaysia is investigating
claims that Filipino immigrants are being mistreated in detention
centers amid a campaign to expel undocumented migrant workers.
Authorities decided to conduct the probe in response to
reports that at least two Filipino children died and thousands of
workers were badly treated prior to deportation from Malaysia's
Sabah state on Borneo island, said Deputy Home Minister Zainal
Abidin Zin.
In Manila, dozens of protesters burned pictures of Mahathir in
a protest outside the Malaysian embassy and handed out leaflets
comparing his government to Hitler's Germany.
"The Malaysian government is going Nazi-style with its
ruthless assault on our country," rally leader Poe Gratela said.