Malaysia delays raids on illegal immigrants
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Malaysia has deferred a large-scale operation to crack down on an estimated 800,000 illegal migrant workers in the country, including 400,000 Indonesians, despite the end of the three-month amnesty.
No official announcement of the postponement was made either in Kuala Lumpur or Jakarta on Tuesday, but according to reports the deferment came after political pressure from foreign governments, including Indonesia, and the United Nations.
AFP reported that the raid was delayed apparently at the request of Indonesia, the Philippines and United Nations, while Malaysia's Bernama news agency reported that the postponement was decided in a coordination meeting led by Malaysia Home Minister Azmi Khalid in Putrajaya, Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
In Jakarta, presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal confirmed the Indonesian government had been notified about the delay.
He said State Secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra was in Kuala Lumpur to lobby Malaysian authorities on the illegal immigrant issue, while President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was scheduled to hold talks with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Achmad Badawi in Kuala Lumpur from Feb. 14 to Feb. 15 to further discuss the matter.
Another presidential spokesman, Andi Mallarangeng, said the government had set up a national team led by Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Alwi Shihab to repatriate all illegal workers from Malaysia.
Indonesia and Malaysia had also provided a one-stop service at 14 entry points along the two countries' borderlines to provide the necessary documents to workers wanting to go back to work legally in Malaysia, he said.
Malaysian Home Ministry official Datuk Haji Mahadi Arshad, who had organized a civilian volunteers to help apprehend the illegal workers, said the indefinite delay was made to enable the authorities to determine the numbers of illegal migrants remaining in Malaysia.
The new date for the operation would be determined by the Minister of Home Affairs, Mahadi Arshad said.
"We will not announce the new date (now). If we do so, the illegal immigrants will go into hiding. We have postponed the operation to determine the number of illegal immigrants still remaining in the country. After that, we will launch a large- scale operation to arrest them," he said.
The amnesty was earlier extended twice until December and January respectively, but only around 400,000 immigrants, including 280,000 Indonesians, left the country.
More than two million illegal immigrants from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines and Vietnam are believed to have been working in the construction, plantation and electronic industries in Malaysia.
The government of the Philippines had asked Malaysia to extend the amnesty by a month to accommodate the estimated 170,000 Filipinos who failed to take the chance to leave the country legally.
Malaysia has recruited around 500,000 civilian volunteers to help crack down on the illegal workers along with police and immigration officials. They had earlier been on standby for the Jan. 31 deadline.
Since the amnesty began, only 52,000 Indonesian illegal workers have returned home through Nunukan, an entry point in East Kalimantan, and 1,500 through the Belawan port of North Sumatra.
Meanwhile, Rusdianto, 18, a worker employed illegally for 17 months in a construction project in Penang, Malaysia, was found dead in a ferry when the ship anchored in Belawan on Monday. His body was sent to his home village in Pamekasan, East Java, at the request of his relatives.
Also on Tuesday, the Sessions Court in Shah Alam, Malaysia, sentenced two Indonesian construction workers to two months' jail after they were found guilty of entering the country and working illegally.
The two would also receive two strokes of cane each, the court ruled.