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."