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Malaysia launches massive crackdown on illegal immigrants
Asian Political News, March 7, 2005
KUALA LUMPUR, March 1 Kyodo
Malaysia on Tuesday launched a massive crackdown against illegal immigrants, with about half a million enforcement officers scouring the country following the end of an amnesty period.
The hunt for more than 400,000 illegal immigrants believed to be hiding or continuing to work in plantations, factories, construction sites and the service industry, began immediately after midnight Monday in an operation code-named ''Ops Tegas,'' the biggest of its kind in Malaysia.
''They know now that we mean business,'' immigration enforcement director Ishak Mohamad was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times. ''We have given them ample time to do the right thing but they have chosen to remain defiant. Now, time has run out and they will have to face the consequences.''
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Malaysia began offering amnesty to an estimated more than 1 million illegal workers in the country on Oct. 29 last year. Most of them are Indonesians, with a few from the Philippines, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.
The amnesty was supposed to end Jan. 1 but the expiry was postponed twice following requests from Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Indonesia is said to be unable to cope with a mass deportation, especially in the aftermath of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunamis.
Under the amnesty program, nearly 400,000 people have left Malaysia. Those who refuse to leave voluntarily and employers who hire them will face whipping, jail or fines if they are caught.
Karmadi, 33, from Central Java, who has been working on a construction site for two years illegally, said he would rather take his chances in Malaysia than going home to an uncertain future.
''I am scared of the crackdown but if I go back, I don't think I can find a job then what am I to eat. I have to make a living so I have decided to stay put,'' he told Kyodo News at the Indonesian Embassy, where he was helping compatriots to file complaints against employers who had allegedly withheld their pay.
For others, the reason not to return was their fear of being persecuted in their home country. Among them are Acehnese from Indonesia and people from the minority Muslim community of Rohingyas in Myanmar.
On Monday, about 300 people from Myanmar, Cambodia and Indonesia's Aceh visited the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Kuala Lumpur to seek temporary refugee status to allow them to remain in the country.
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have called for Malaysia to stop the crackdown and mass deportation due to possible human rights violations against the deportees.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Kyodo News International, Inc.
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