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.