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.