Hundreds more on illegal migrant workers deported from Malaysia

Hundreds more on illegal migrant workers deported from Malaysia

Fadli, Batam

After being deported from Malaysia, some 630 Indonesian illegal
migrants arrived on Saturday evening in Tanjung Uban port, North
Bintan district, Riau Islands regency. They were deported by the
Malaysian government for various immigration violations.

The latest deportation is one of the biggest in the recent
past that has come to the attention of the press, and follows a
series of deportations two years ago that involved hundreds of
thousands of Indonesian migrant workers.

Saturday's deportation began when the migrant workers, who
entered and worked in Malaysia without proper documents, embarked
on board the Samudra Jaya, a commercial passenger ship, for the
trip home at 2 p.m from Pasir Gudang in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
They arrived three hours later at Tanjung Uban port in Riau
Islands regency.

After their arrival, they were set to embark on further trips
to bring them back to their homes across the archipelago,
including Lombok island, Surabaya and Dumai.

The Tanjung Uban harbormaster, Yusuf Sofyan, said that out of
the 630 undocumented migrant workers, 450 of them had been
detained in Semenyik prison in Malaysia, while 180 others had
been held in Pekan Nanas prison before they were deported. They
were all arrested after the Malaysian authorities conducted raids
on Malaysian employers and places of entertainment.

Sri Wahyuni, one of the migrant worker, said that she had been
detained by the Malaysian authorities while working in a pub in
Kuala Lumpur last week as she had been unable to produce a work
permit. "I was kept in Pekan Nanas prison for one week before I
was deported," said Wahyuni.

The Malaysian government has carried out mass deportations on
a number of occasions over the past few years, with the largest
being two years ago when hundreds of thousands of Indonesian
migrant workers were expelled from Malaysia. Tens of thousands of
them were deported through Nunukan in Kalimantan, which later
became a center of abject misery.

Nunukan became a focus of public concern in 2002 when the tiny
East Kalimantan island was converted into a temporary transit
point for deported migrant workers following the introduction of
a new Immigration Act in Malaysia on July 31.

The squalid camps on the island eventually became home to up
to 40,000 workers waiting to either return to Malaysia or to
their hometowns.