KL deports 1,600 Indonesian workers
KL deports 1,600 Indonesian workers
Reuters, Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia has deported more than 1,600 Indonesian illegal immigrants after a blaze at their detention camp earlier this week left them without quarters, an immigration official said on Thursday.
Detainees at the Pekan Nenas camp in the southern Peninsula Malaysian state of Johor rioted and burnt down some of their accommodation blocks on Tuesday before police fired tear gas to quash the uprising.
A Johor Immigration Department official told Reuters 1,618 Indonesian men had been deported by ship on Wednesday.
He said the remaining 679 male inmates, whom one newspaper reported as being due for deportation on Thursday, were sent to other camps in neighboring states to be sent home in due course.
"Except for a block housing 240 women detainees, the camp has been cleared out," the official said. "It will be closed down eventually."
The 679 comprise mainly nationals of Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, Cambodia, Thailand and Nepal.
In East Malaysian Sabah, police deported more than 500 Filipinos on Thursday, taking them by road from the state capital Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan and on by ferry to Zamboanga city on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao.
Assistant Police Commissioner Sidin Karim told reporters the deportees were in addition to 566 sent home last week.
Malaysia carried out its largest ever deportation of illegal immigrants last month, sending back around 2,500 Indonesian workers on two Indonesian naval ships under armed escort.
Another Indonesian naval ship will arrive this weekend to collect a further 1,700 Indonesians in another deportation exercise planned before Tuesday's rioting.
The New Straits Times said some Indonesian detainees had rioted on Tuesday because they were not included in the plans for a weekend deportation.
Many had wanted to go home for the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the current Muslim fasting month of Ramadhan. It said only 545 of the Indonesians at the camp were picked by Indonesian government officials to be sent home this weekend.
Illegal immigration is a big problem for this southeast Asian nation, which has a population of 23 million and is a favored destination for workers from its more populous, poorer neighbors.
The country is home to more than a million foreign workers, most of them from Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines.
The government said it would begin deporting about 300,000 overseas workers from last month to cut down on foreign labor in certain industries and free up jobs for locals affected by the economic slowdown.