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.