YOU may remember news broke out last month of 42 women from Vietnam who were stranded in a house in Pulau Tikus, Penang after their visas expired. The women who were brought to Malaysia by an agent for employment found themselves instead shut in the house without their passports, while reportedly surviving mostly on rice that they were given.
When their plight was made known and they were finally rescued, they claimed their employer had not even paid their salaries. They were later sent to a women’s shelter in Kuala Lumpur.
Following this, the authorities also found 34 Vietnamese and Nepalese men held under similar circumstances and believed to have been brought in by the same agent. They were sent to a camp in Malacca.
Last week, two non-governmental organisations revealed that the women had been transferred from the shelter in KL to a detention camp for illegal immigrants in Juru.
Why were these women, quite apparently victims of human trafficking, detained in such a place? According to the NGOs – the Northern Migration Network (Jump) and the Penang Office of Human Development (POHD) – 41 Nepalese men who were also victims were in the same situation.
“This doesn’t make sense as they are victims of human trafficking but are treated like criminals,” POHD spokesman K. Sudhagaran Stanley said. Both Sudhagaran and Pulau Tikus assemblyman Koay Teng Guan have lodged a police report about the detention.
For those who don’t know, the Juru detention camp is infamous for its history of poor hygiene and disease outbreak. It was, for example, hit by a severe leptospirosis outbreak three years ago which killed some detainees from Myanmar while numerous others were hospitalised.
When news of this became public, residents from surrounding housing estates came out to say that they had been affected by the unsanitary environment for years. Also in the vicinity are a school and several industries with thousands of workers.
The very nature of the disease raises numerous questions about the hygiene conditions at the camp. For leptospirosis is commonly transmitted to humans through contact with water contaminated by the urine of infected animals like rats, mice and dogs.
Embarrassingly enough, just days after the NGOs questioned the authorities on why the women, who were victims, were being held in such a camp, there was a surprise development on the international front with regard to Malaysia’s action on refugees.
It was reported that Australia had already started accepting refugees from Malaysia, mainly people from Myanmar, under a two-dimension arrangement between the two countries. It was agreed last year that Australia would send 8,000 asylum seekers from Christmas Island to Malaysia to process their claims for refugee status. In return Australia would over four years receive 4,000 people certified as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
But the high court in Australia blocked the move to send asylum seekers to Malaysia, a key reason cited that Malaysia is not a signatory to the United Nations convention on refugees.
The Australian High Commission has reportedly stressed that Australia is committed to receiving refugees based in Malaysia. “We are in the process of taking this year’s component of that 4,000-refugee commitment and those people are now coming to Australia,” High Commissioner Miles Kupa reportedly told ABC Radio. “So we’re living up to that side of the agreement, even though the other part of it is blocked for the moment.”
Malaysia now cannot shake off its international profile in the worldwide illegal immigration dilemma.
And there is a key point now being highlighted by the questions on the treatment of Vietnamese and Nepalese victims of human trafficking. It is that Malaysia needs to urgently act on putting a proper working system in place to judiciously and conscientiously deal with illegal immigrants who are genuine victims of human rights abuse.
Himanshu is theSun’s Penang bureau chief. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
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