Malaysia delays raids on illegal immigrants

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.