Welcomes turn sour for Southeast Asian illegal immigrants

Welcomes turn sour for Southeast Asian illegal immigrants

By Beth Duff-brown

SUNGAI BEREMBANG, Malaysia (AP): By day, Salleh Abidin is a mild-mannered rice farmer, tending the lush paddies that cushion the limestone cliffs along the Thai border.

By night, Salleh joins other village vigilantes to prowl the mangrove swamps along the shoreline of the Straits of Malacca, truncheons gripped, shotguns cocked.

"It is a privilege to be chosen to serve the country by guarding our shores against them," Salleh said. "It's my patriotic duty, now that we are in a state of alert."

There are a half-billion of "them" on the move in East and Southeast Asia -- migrants workers hoping to give their families an edge over poverty. The currency crisis that gripped Southeast Asia last summer has made them more desperate, more determined.

Today, millions of illegal aliens are poised to enter Malaysia, which finds itself trapped between the two hardest-hit countries, Thailand and Indonesia.

Though over the years undocumented workers helped turn Malaysia into one of Asia's miracle economies, they now find themselves the target of "Operation Go Away."

Nearly 19,000 undocumented Indonesians have been arrested by Malaysian authorities since January, double the number for all of 1997. Malaysia believes another 12,000 are lingering on Indonesian shores, waiting for boats here.

Authorities have deported nearly 7,000 Indonesians since January. A predawn push on March 23 sparked rioting at a detention camp outside the capital, Kuala Lumpur, killing at least eight Indonesian immigrants and one officer.

As Indonesians flee the worst economic crisis in 30 years, Thailand is already looking for jobs for about 1.8 million unemployed Thais hit by its recession.

Thailand intends to deport about one million illegal foreign workers by May 1, freeing up jobs for Thais. Most of the illegals are from Myanmar; many from ethnic minority groups fleeing human rights abuses by the military regime in the country also known as Burma. Others come from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

"We fear that this is not a short-term thing, that they'll come in and settle and propagate and that will threaten our future generations," said Jamal bin Mohamad, a trucker from the northwestern village of Sungai Berembang, just south of the Thai border.

That fear often prompts two dozen men to patrol the shore, some armed with the shotguns that police have provided to citizens' corps throughout the Thai border states.

Before the recent government crackdown, which includes 50 military vessels patrolling the Straits of Malacca, the vigilantes would patrol their shore from sundown to sunrise.

Malaysian authorities have instilled a sense of dread among their people, insisting that their national security is at stake and calling on them to be their eyes and ears.

A high-level police official who helps maintain Malaysia's 27- kilometer concrete wall snaking along the Thai border said he found the potential influx of aliens from Thailand "very, very alarming."

"When they come in they bring in a lot of problems, social problems, economic problems, especially religious problems," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They marry Moslems, go back and then leave behind wives from marriages of convenience."

The $22-million "Berlin Wall" of Malaysia has been a success since its completion last year, the official said.

Things are so quiet along the 10-foot-tall (3 meter) wall, guards have time to perfect their blow-gun techniques and collect bat droppings to sell to fertilizer producers.

Nevertheless, Malaysia, also suffering from a severe economic slowdown, fears a flood of illegals and has adopted stiff penalties against them and their agents, including lashings with a rattan cane.

Dozens of traffickers of undocumented workers have been detained under the powerful Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial.

The crackdown has taken foreign workers by surprise, as they have traditionally been welcomed here. Malaysia imports more migrant workers than any other Asian country; of its 8-million- member labor force, 3 million are migrant workers, and half of those are Indonesian.

"They have contributed greatly to our economy," Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said recently. "But we cannot afford to have too many migrants in our country."

The government just announced that more than 25,000 illegal immigrants who had been working on the new Kuala Lumpur International Airport would be deported by June, when the first phase of what Malaysia intends as Asia's largest airport is scheduled for completion.

"When the economy was booming, they were needed," said Irene Fernandez, Malaysia's most outspoken immigrants' rights activist. "They were needed to build the highest building, the biggest airport, the longest whatever. Migrants seem to have been needed in every sector because locals were not willing to do the dirty, demanding, dangerous jobs."

Authorities in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, admit that they can do little to stop people from leaving a country of 13,000 islands.

"Our border areas are so wide, with so many tiny islands," said Marsanuddin Gani, spokesman for Indonesia's immigration department. "It becomes more difficult when their journeys are arranged by syndicates."

So in Malaysia, they're circling the wagons.

"Everything I do here is not only for the state, it's for the nation," said Seri Shahidan Kassim, chief minister of Perlis state on the Thai border. "When Thailand pushes them out to go back to their countries, they're not going back. They'll come here -- and we'll be waiting at the border."