UN refugee agency concerned at crackdown on illegal immigrants in Malaysia
The United Nations refugee agency today expressed concern that thousands of refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia could be at risk of arrest, detention or deportation in a crackdown on illegal migrants when an extended amnesty ends on 28 February.
But the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has received “assurances from the highest levels of the Malaysian Government that people of concern to us will not be affected,” spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva, noting that there are some 47,000 people of concern, including ethnic groups from Myanmar, people fleeing from Indonesia's Aceh province, and other nationalities.
In readiness for the crackdown, UNHCR has put in place a number of informal arrangements both with the police and RELA, a half-million-strong civil volunteer force, to prevent “people of concern to us” being affected, he added.
The agency has set up a 24-hour operations room with three hotline numbers to ensure that the authorities can check whether an individual is registered with UNHCR or is of concern to the office. If so, they should then be released.
UNHCR will also be increasing monitoring activities at immigration depots, and intensifying registration efforts. In mid-December 2004, it started sending mobile registration teams to the jungle camps to provide documentation to hundreds of refugees and people of concern who often live alongside illegal migrants, increasing their risk of being picked up.
“We hope that these combined measures will go a long way to protecting refugees and people of concern to UNHCR during the crackdown,” Mr. Redmond said. “We have been encouraged recently by a constructive and strengthened relationship between UNHCR and the Government. Last week, for instance, in a much welcome act, the police force in Sepang district released into UNHCR custody 14 Acehnese registered with us who had been arrested. UNHCR is greatly encouraged that documentation was respected by law enforcers.”