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.