Will separation from long-term based communities be the best way to solve the plight of Chin refugees in Malaysia?

by Salai C C

Surprising but not amazing, I was shocked when I visited the hospital along with Chin Refugee Committee medical team on last Sunday evening.

The visit perturbed me at a time when I saw that many of Chin patients lying down on the bed and having medical treatment. Yet, the scene made me realized one thing that how the Chin people are ignorant to inform the communities because most of the patients’ conditions had not been heard by the medical team due to lack of providing information to their respective communities by relatives or friends.

During the visit, the Chin Refugee Community could reach only three patients those were admitted to the hospital on last month and encouraging them not to be worried for their future. Truly, it’s so sad that the team could not meet Miss. Lal Hmen Kungi due to the fact that she went for surgery during the visit.

Among them, a woman named Ngun Te, a mother of one child from Ngaleng village, Matupi Township, who just came to Malaysia on 20.04.2010, was suspected to be suffering from Malaria or Dengue and the hospital has already instilled her 25 bottles of glucose. She’s just new arrival and was supposed to add in derivative status system under the husband file in UNHCR office. But it was unfortunately stuck related to her health condition and was unable to walk off to the UNHCR office prior to hospitalization. She will not receive any promotions as she is not registered with the UNHCR while other patients with UNHCR card are given promotions of 50% discount.

"Had the husband or friends earlier informed CRC or ACR, all of the patients would be reached and the communities will never hesitate to help them in any possible ways. This is what they are doing now with lack of wise thinking for what might come about next. To define the dozens of hundreds of the Chin people want to separate from the biggest and most effective communities led by the hypocrites( the ones who know only how to be served but to serve) and wish to become a leader in their own sub-organizations or village movements. As a matter of facts, competing for the leadership position is very popular but many are, at the same time, unaware of what should be done for the effectiveness and betterment of the community which becomes a virus and makes the community weakling and bring about the bad names as a result.

“In a sense, even if their relatives or friends failed to inform us, their respective sub-organizations or village leaders should try us and alarm us so that we will intervene somehow as we are always ready to help,” one of volunteer worker said.

In relation to the statement above, Chin refugees in Malaysia should widely concentrate and need to understand the role and task of community administration and service providing. Many of sub-organizations have been established and sprang up as if a season of mushroom, the future may be doomed due to deny of renewing their membership cards with CRC and ACR, the biggest communities working closely with the UNHCR office. In particular, it’s time to understand what they can’t do anything for the benefit of the community except collecting money for their owned-community membership card fee and social related-affairs.

True but not a funny, a bunch of the newly sub-organizations and small communities are never reliably responsible for the people in terms of rescue from detention centers, admitting to Hospital and contacting with UNHCR which are mainly important to stand. That would be nice if they could energetically conduct such services in the community but so sad they aren’t capable of implementing these trends until now.

The latest surveillance shows that seventy percents of the income has been drastically decreased down and the communities are being sunk into financial crisis in order to run the services provided. It was since most of the Chin people effectively deny renewing their membership cards after mass registration operated by UNHCR. For that reason, the most responsible communities, CRC and ACR have to wisely decide to do the restricted roles in the administration in support of help for community even though they are best serving their own people by all costs.

Obviously, it is unacceptable that many are complaint over the different dialect which is not totally a matter of importance but just an excuse. Both CRC and ACR have adequately volunteers from different dialect to meet the needs of language barriers.

Therefore, will separation from CRC and ACR be the best way to solve the plight of Chin refugees in Malaysia regarding arrest, detentions and health care service which is the must-to-do problem for everyone.

The desire to be boss in any circumstances indicates the exercise of the nepotism and cronyism that is badly inflicting the people and a big epidemic among the society as we are ruled over for more than 2 decades by the military regime. “Failure of learning what the past history is the absence of the qualification to be a reliable leader” said one of Chin society analyst. For Chins, humility is what most requires and very rare like diamond.

If anybody expects better progress among our society through the present patterns of ideological conflicts, they surely need to have the clear understanding towards the building of the bright future. It’s never too late to learn our ailing history from the past.