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In response to the Minister of Home Affairs statement that Malaysia does not recognize the powers of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Aliran is disappointed that our government has adopted a stand against the recognition of human rights.

UNHCR was invited by our government to deal with the refugee situation in our country ever since we found that refugees from neighbouring countries were coming to our shores seeking refuge from political upheaval and persecution in their home countries. It started with the Vietnamese refugees.

Malaysia is seen as a safe-haven by those fleeing the dangers in their countries, as internal conflict is absent here. Moreover, Malaysia has also adopted an economic policy which encourages migration of labour from other ASEAN countries, including those like Myanmar and the Philippines, where internal conflict is on-going.

It only stands to reason that due to the above-mentioned fact, refugees and asylum- seekers will be carried with the inflow of migrant labour coming to this country, seeking a safe-haven and a new life.

In obstructing UNHCR from playing their role in helping to sort out the obviously chaotic irregular migrant situation, the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration authorities make themselves the root cause of the problem.

Apart from the fact that as a member of the United Nations, and a State party to the United Nations Charter, more importantly, a member of the UN Human Rights Council, obligated to promote and uphold human rights, nationally and internationally, Malaysia appears to adopt an anti-human rights stance in relation to refugees and asylum-seekers.

Aliran hopes that the proposed guidelines on the position of refugees and asylum seekers will recognize the important role and powers of UNHCR, and the advantages inherent in allowing UNHCR to carry out their work according to their mandate, unobstructed and unhindered in any way, by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Immigration authorities.

Further, maintenance of over-crowded immigration detention centers which lack proper facilities to cater for the increasing number of  migrant detainees, indiscriminately detained, is a burden on tax-payers and the authorities who have to run the centers. Allowing UNHCR to lessen the number of  immigration detainees by separating refugees and asylum seekers from other categories of irregular migrants can only be a positive move towards solving the problems in these detention centers.

Moreover, as UNHCR already has a good monitoring system for refugees and asylum seekers, it is only to the government’s advantage to use this system to sort out the existing chaos. UNHCR can look after its own category of migrants and can resettle them in other countries, if Malaysia does not accept them.

To allow refugees, temporary settlement, should not be a problem, as they are a human resource which is readily available to alleviate any labour shortages in the country. After all, since they may be resettled in third countries, they will not be a long-term burden socially or economically.

Aliran, therefore urges the Minister of Home Affairs and the Immigration authorities to recognize UNHCR documentation to ease their own immigration problems. There should be no conflict between the work of UNHCR and the work of Immigration enforcement units, including Rela, since both maintain the same objective to resolve the problem of irregular migrants systematically and in a way that will benefit Malaysia.

The government should also look at ratifying the 1951 Refugee Convention, to better organize and systematize its immigration policies, as the need to do so becomes increasingly essential, in view of the existing haphazard and chaotic state of management of the vast number of undocumented and irregular migrants in Malaysia.

Aliran Executive Committee.

3 February 2007