KOTA KINABALU: Opposition strongman Jeffrey Kitingan has accused Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein of fudging the issue of Filipino refugees in Sabah.
He said Hishammuddin gave a “non answer” in Parliament last week in his response to Kota Kinabalu MP Hiew King Cheu, who asked why the government was issuing the MyKad to the refugees.
Hishammuddin’s curt response to Hiew was to give the stock government reply — that only those qualified under the Federal Constitution are provided with Malaysian personal documents. He cited Article 78 of the National Registration Act 1959.
“He did not really address the issue,” said Jeffrey. “Locals know these people. They go around flashing their MyKads. This is like rubbing it in our faces.”
He pointed out that possession of a MyKad denoted Malaysian citizenship status and that not everyone, even if born in Malaysia, was eligible for it.
The bottom line is that when a Filipino refugee gets a MyKad without the need to go through the citizenship process like other foreigners, according to Jeffrey, “he or she automatically also enters the category of instant natives.” It would then be easier for these refugees to acquire native land and political power at the expense of locals.
Jeffrey said he was putting the home ministry and federal government on notice that the law prohibited the issuing of Malaysian personal documents to any foreigner in Sabah without the express consent of the state government.
“The question is whether foreigners in Sabah are becoming Malaysians with the consent of the state government,” he said. “If not, the state government has the right under the special provisions for East Malaysia in the Immigration Act to effect the removal of such persons to Peninsular Malaysia.”
Jeffrey, who is a PKR vice-president and chairman of CigMA (Common Interest Group Malaysia), suspects that the state government is being kept in the dark about the issuing of MyKads to foreigners. He said this could be because Umno was spearheading the state administration “or it could also be a case of local leaders not speaking up when it comes to state rights for fear of losing out personally.”
Why dumped in Sabah?
He added: “We would like to urge the federal government to stop the continued issuance of the IMM 13 document to refugees and their children. Instead, efforts should be made to repatriate these people back to the southern Philippines.”
Those sheltering under the IMM 13 category were in fact illegal immigrants given Malaysia’s non-recognition of the refugee category, he said.
Malaysia has ratified neither the 1952 Geneva Convention on Refugees nor the 1967 Protocol.Bestowing Malaysian citizenship status on refugees would be the height of irony, Jeffrey said, given that about 30,000 Sabahans are not Malaysians. Furthermore there are several thousand stateless people in the interior among the natives and an even bigger number wrestling with late birth registrations.
Jeffrey asked Hishammuddin to reveal whether any refugee on the peninsula had been granted the MyKad. He saw no reason why the Filipino refugees should be dumped on Sabah when those in a similar plight in Peninsular Malaysia, from Myanmar and elsewhere, were languishing in a legal twilight zone, “where they are not even allowed to work, unlike in Sabah.”
He suspects the Filipino refugees are being used to play an important role in “the re-colonisation of the state by the federal government,” which he said started in 1963. CigMA is pledged to reverse “the re-colonisation”.
He welcomed Hishammuddin’s statement that the granting of citizenship will be speeded up in a process that is not expected to exceed two years. “However, it must be stressed that Filipino refugees are not qualified for citizenship,” reiterated Jeffrey. “Perhaps this is why they are simply being issued with MyKads without going through the normal process for foreigners.”
Estimates vary, but one official figure places the number of Filipino refugees in Sabah at between 57,500 and 70,500.
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