UN combs Malaysian jungles for refugees ahead of crackdown
UN combs Malaysian jungles for refugees ahead of crackdown
M. Jegathesan, Agence France-Presse/Kuala Lumpur
Mobile teams will be deployed in an urgent effort to register refugees hiding in the jungles on the fringes of Malaysian cities ahead of an imminent government crackdown on illegal immigrants, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday.
It is feared that asylum seekers from military-ruled Myanmar and the strife-torn Indonesian province of Aceh will be swept up along with hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, Volker Turk, head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia, told AFP.
"It is urgent and it is our priority now to register the asylum seekers, especially from Myanmar and Aceh, so that they are protected from police raids and from being detained," Turk said.
The UNHCR says that in one case, hundreds of asylum seekers live in makeshift camps in the jungle outside Putrajaya, the gleaming new administrative capital about 30 kilometers south of Kuala Lumpur.
Many of them found work on Putrajaya construction sites like thousands of other illegal workers and often share camps in the jungle, making them vulnerable to arrest when the crackdown begins in January, Turk said.
A trial run on the effectiveness of the mobile teams registering refugees, who fear going into the cities to register, was a success in Penang last month where 600 people from Aceh were documented, he said.
But Turk expressed fears that not all the refugees, totaling some 29,000 people, could be registered before the start of the crackdown which begins after an amnesty ends this month.
The government has announced that it will deploy more than half a million members of volunteer neighborhood security groups to track down and detain the estimated 1.2 million illegal immigrants in the country, mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines.
The move has been described as "ominous" by Human Rights Watch. The volunteers would receive minimal training and would get cash rewards for each migrant arrested, the rights group said, urging the government to drop the plan to avoid "vigilantism".
But Home Minister Azmi Khalid told AFP on Monday there would be no change in the plan, saying those heading the civilian groups were skilled and experienced as they were former military and police officials.
Turk, however, expressed concern about whether the volunteers were trained "to distinguish the documents the refugees hold".
The UNHCR says there are about 11,000 refugees from Aceh, 10,000 Muslim Rohingyas from Myanmar and some 8,000 Myanmarese from various other ethnic groups.
It has welcomed the government's recent decision to give temporary stay permits to the Rohingyas, but says the status of the others "is yet unclear".
Human Rights Watch has also expressed concern that refugees and victims of human trafficking could be caught up in the sweep and deported instead of receiving protection.
The crackdown could also give rise to the use of excessive force during raids and the prolonged detention of migrants in unsanitary conditions, Human rights Watch said.
The Indonesian government has begun setting up shelters and support services for returning migrants, but it is unclear whether the arrangements will be enough to avoid the deaths and other abuses that occurred in a similar deportation operation in 2002, Human Rights Watch said.
Azmi said only about 111,000 illegal migrants had left the country since the amnesty began on Oct. 29 and he did not foresee a major exodus before it expired despite tough punishment including jail terms and a whipping for those who overstay.
The illegal immigrants, who face poverty and unemployment in their own countries, are drawn to relatively prosperous Malaysia by jobs in construction, plantation work and services.