Malaysia steps up campaign against illegal immigrants

Malaysia steps up campaign against illegal immigrants

Agencies, Kuala Lumpur/Nusa Dua, Bali

Malaysian police rounded up 3,705 people, mostly from neighboring Indonesia and the Philippines, as it stepped up its campaign to throw out illegal immigrants, police said on Thursday.

The arrests were made in Sabah state on Borneo, the giant forested island Indonesia shares with Malaysia and Brunei, and are part of a nationwide sweep.

More than 700 squatter homes were demolished in the operation, which was also aimed at unearthing suspected militants hiding out in northern Borneo, police said.

Thousands of immigrants fled their homes in eastern Malaysia to escape a massive operation aimed at deporting them and rooting out any armed militants hiding among them.

"They are cornered," Hamdan Mohamad, police chief in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah's capital, told The Associated Press. "We will track them down, as this operation will continue indefinitely."

Police have screened 6,102 immigrants since the operation began on Tuesday and 1,245 found to be illegals have been detained, said senior police officer Mohamad Reduan Abdullah.

"This crackdown will be a continuing process until we achieve our target of zero illegal immigrants," he told AFP from the state capital Kota Kinabalu.

Some 4,000 personnel from police, immigration and other government agencies are involved in the drive to rid Sabah -- which is near to the southern Philippines -- of an estimated 600,000 illegal immigrants.

The crackdown coincided with a landmark people smuggling conference which opened in Indonesia on Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar, who attended the conference, appeared unfazed by Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri's complaint there that some countries were taking unilateral action to send economic refugees to Indonesia.

"I think she is entitled to (say) what she wants to say. Countries cannot act unilaterally. For instance, if we want to remove people from here, we have to inform the Indonesians," Syed Hamid told reporters on his return to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.

Syed Hamid said his country has about one million illegal immigrants, or 5 percent of the population.

"It is a burden on our social, economic and political (systems)," he told reporters on the sidelines of an international conference on people-smuggling on Indonesia's Bali island.

Malaysia, with a population of 23 million people, has nagging fears of being overrun by people fleeing the poverty and violence besetting its more populous neighbors.

The country has around two million foreign workers, of whom most are Indonesia, and more than half are illegal.

Malaysia depends on foreigners to work in factories, plantations and construction sites, and as domestic servants.

But increased unemployment and rising crime persuaded the government to crackdown on illegal immigrants, and Indonesians have borne the brunt.

Malaysia last month said it would kick out hundreds of thousands of illegals and whip any who tried to evade deportation.

Philippine envoy to Malaysia Jose Brillantes was quoted by the Star newspaper on Thursday as saying that Manila would speed up the documentation for Filipinos facing deportation.

The newspaper said the authorities had also seized unspecified "dangerous weapons" in a raid on a Filipino settlement near the coastal town of Lahad Datu.

Meanwhile, Malaysia said on Thursday it was reviewing its policy of granting visa-free entry to some countries after people-smugglers took advantage of the policy to route their Australia-bound human cargo through the country.

Indonesian and Australian officials have repeatedly identified Malaysia as a transit point for Australia-bound Middle Eastern asylum-seekers.

They cross the Malacca Strait by small boat to Indonesia, where they are placed on larger boats for frequently perilous voyages to Australia.