Police arrest 40 asylum seekers in Malaysia

Police arrest 40 asylum seekers in Malaysia

Agencies, Jakarta

Ignoring appeals to end a crackdown on asylum seekers, Malaysian
police arrested nearly 40 more Indonesians on Tuesday, as they
were approaching a United Nations office to seek protection,
according to UN officials.

The asylum seekers -- mostly from the war-torn province of
Aceh and several from Myanmar -- were taken into custody at a
police checkpoint outside the downtown Kuala Lumpur office of the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the officials said.

Police arrested 232 Achenese refugee applicants for illegally
entering Malaysia in a similar operation last week, prompting the
UNHCR to suspend taking new refugee applications. It accused the
police of harassing asylum seekers.

The UN body had previously planned to begin taking
applications again on Tuesday, but decided against it when police
stopped and questioned immigrants outside the office and began
arresting those who were not carrying valid travel papers, said
UNHCR spokesman Evan Ruth.

"We forcibly suspend our operations because of the police
action. Asylum seekers are afraid to seek our help. We cannot
operate in this type of environment," Ruth told The Associated
Press (AP).

Police were not immediately available for comments on Tuesday.

But top officials have said that allowing the immigrants to
stay would set a bad precedence, and vowed that anyone who enters
Malaysia illegally will get little sympathy from the authorities.

"These are people who came into the country without the proper
documents and for that reason alone they will certainly be
arrested," Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar was quoted as saying
in the New Straits Times on Tuesday.

In both cases, Malaysian authorities insisted that they would
deport the asylum seekers back to Indonesia as soon as possible.

The Indonesian government supported the decision, saying that
they were ready to facilitate the departure of the asylum
seekers.

"We appreciate the Malaysian decision not to grant refugee
status to these people, as according to the investigation they
have been staying illegally in Malaysia for years... and not
because of the ongoing military operation in Aceh," Hassan said
on Tuesday.

"The Indonesian government is ready to accept these people and
they should not be afraid if they have no links with the Free
Aceh Movement (GAM)," he stressed.

Suaram, a Malaysian human rights group, urged the government
to release the detained asylum seekers.

"This brazen defiance of international law and human rights by
the Malaysian government must not go unchecked," Eric Paulsen, a
Suaram spokesman, said in a statement.

Each year, the UN office in Kuala Lumpur accepts hundreds of
applications for refugee status from people who come to Malaysia
from poorer countries in the region, including Myanmar, Indonesia
and Cambodia.

According to the international law, UN-recognized refugees
cannot be deported against their will. But Malaysia is not a
signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and does not
recognize political refugees.