Media Statement by Yeo Bee Yin, State Assemblyperson of Damansara Utama on Wednesday 13 May 2015 in Petaling Jaya.
The number of refugees in Malaysia will continue to increase and the government can no longer practice “can’t see, can’t hear” policy on refugee.
It was reported that more than a thousand of Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees have just arrived at Malaysian shore. According to UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) report entitled “Irregular Maritime Movement”, about 25,000 people are estimated to have departed from the Bay of Bengal in the first quarter of 2015 in the hope to reach Malaysia by sea[1]. Therefore, we believe that this is just the beginning of more refugees to arrive in days to come.
Even
before this large-scale influx of refugees, Malaysia is already one of the top
destinations for refugees in South East Asia region with a total of 250,930
population of concern including 115,700 refugees and others such as asylum
seekers, stateless people and so on[2].
As
of now, we lack legislative and administrative framework to address refugee
problem. UNHCR working relationship with Malaysian government is only limited
to the prevention of deportation and detention intervention. Refugees
recognized by the UNHCR are only allowed to work unofficially (usually
extremely low-pay) and the children of refugees are not allowed to go to
national schools. Such circumstances if not addressed properly will soon bring
social problems such as more stateless children, poverty, and criminality.
Since Malaysia
did not sign 1951 UN Convention on Refugees nor 1967 Protocol to recognize the
rights of refugee, current government policy is to accept refugees into the
country only temporarily while waiting for their resettlement at third
countries including Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, New Zealand,
Norway, and the United States. The “can’t see can’t hear” system is framed in
such a way as if the refugee don’t exist in the country.
Nevertheless, it
was reported that the number of places available for resettlement in third
countries for the refugees in Malaysia is shrinking rapidly.[3] Coupled with this current wave of refugee influx, we believe
that the population of refugees in Malaysia will continue to grow and they will
stay here for a long time.
The question now
is can Malaysia refugee policy remain status quo in the face of the rising
number of refugees? Should we recognize the status of refugee and their rights?
What cross-boundary solutions should we advocate? How can we get the funding
from the international community to help with refugee management in Malaysia?
Can the refugees in Malaysia continue to hold no or extremely low-pay job, live
in poor conditions and yet not pose safety problem to us? Can the children of
refugees continue to be deprived of formal education? How can we protect the
women refugee from sexual exploitation? These are some pertinent questions that
we’ll eventually have to answer. It’s better that we do now than later.
We believe that
refugee issue in Malaysia can be handled more comprehensively and the
government can assume greater responsibility to help with the current efforts
made by UNHCR and NGOs. With that, we call upon the government to form a
non-partisan refugee committee comprising of representatives from both sides of
the political divide, relevant NGOs and international organizations such as
UNHCR to spearhead reform in legislative and administrative framework to deal
with issues related to refugees.
