“I Want to be a Police, But Not Like the Ones We Have in Malaysia”

Karen Zusman, for the Pulitzer Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I want to be a police, Mum but not like the ones in Malaysia!

The quote in the title is from Asha, 12 years old, a Rohingya refugee.

If Malaysia is serious about cleaning up its record on trafficking, it needs to address the root causes that make these populations so vulnerable to begin with.

I’m standing in front of a gas station somewhere on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. The road is busy and though it’s before noon, the sun is already searing hot. The man I’m waiting for pulls up on a small motorbike and I hop on the back. We leave the bustling highway behind and soon are climbing unpaved, rocky  roads that ascend quickly. Twice I have to jump off the bike.

The man is a community leader for the Rohingya. The Rohingya are one of Burma’s many ethnic groups--all of which have organized themselves much like welfare centers for their respective members, whose lives, in many cases, are nearly as vulnerable in Malaysia as the ones they fled from in Burma.

While all the various ethnic refugee communities from Burma suffer from a lack of basic rights in Malaysia, i.e., without rights to: seek safe shelter; to work; to attend school; or receive healthcare, the Rohingya, who have been living in Malaysia the longest, seem, as a group, to exist within the most dire of circumstances. They are one of the most persecuted groups in Burma because of their religion; they’re Muslim, which means that they are unlikely to receive resettlement in the US or elsewhere.  One might think that by fleeing to a Muslim nation like Malaysia they might find the refuge they seek, but that has hardly been the case. While many of the families have been here for generations, their compromised situation in Malaysia has only bred a lineage of destitution.

In Malaysia, the refugees from Burma survive largely because of the support they receive from their community groups, which attempt to provide short-term crisis shelter and even some schooling, all of which is dependent on private donations. But because their poverty is so extreme, many of the Rohingya families live far away from these community centers, which are located closer to the city where it is also more expensive to live.  Hence, this unexpected back country-like motorbike ride to visit the home of Zaida, a Rohingya widow, and her four children, ages: 6, 8, 12 and 14.

They live in a small shack of rotting wood and rusted tin walls, which Zaida keeps spotless. The children have been given a few used schoolbooks by local NGOs. Nearly every inch of the pages already have been scribbled in, perhaps even by the young hands of their previous owners, but still, next to the family’s official UN refugee status cards, the books are clearly their most prized possessions.

These cards, issued by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNCHR), include Zaida’s now deceased husband’s ID as well; and she fans out all six cards on the floor in front of my feet as if she was showing me a winning hand at poker, yet doesn’t understand why she has been denied all her chips.

Though she and her family members have all been registered, they’ve been told they may never be resettled to a third country but still, she has to hope and wait. Meanwhile, when the whole family was arrested in a raid, the cards were useless, offering no protection, an all too common story for refugees living in Malaysia. So Zaida and her family, including the youngest child who was just two at the time, spent four months in Lengging Detention Camp, one of the most notorious for its living conditions, which have been repeatedly characterized by refugees and NGOs as inhumane.

Zaida has tears in her eyes and speaks with passion. The community leader who has brought me to her and who is acting as a translator can hardly keep up with her: Since her husband died they have no way to earn money. She tries to do a little sewing or sells vegetables in the street. As refugees, they are not allowed to hold jobs in Malaysia. But nobody has told her how she can feed her family under these laws. That’s why she and her children are often begging on the street, a situation that leaves the children especially vulnerable to the vultures that will lure them with promises of food and money, and then sell them to human traffickers.  

I speak with the children one by one. When I ask the 6-year-old boy to tell me his dream, he tells me all he wants to do is go to school. When I ask his 12-year-old sister the same question, she says she wants to be a police officer so that she can arrest criminals and keep the good people safe, “But not like the police they have here in Malaysia; here they like to arrest people like me because I am a refugee, but I am not a criminal, I have not done anything wrong.” In fact, these children were born in Malaysia, and yet they are not allowed to attend school, nor have a job when they are older.

It’s easy to see the kids are restless. I wonder what they do all day, with no school to go to, and no friends around. Then I hear some laughter. The little boy has climbed up the rusty wall and is walking across the rafter. He looks down at all of us with a mischievous smile. His mother yells at him to get down. But he refuses. For this moment only, he is on top of this little world.  I’m grateful for a break in our recording.

We leave the family with Zaida begging me to speak to UNHCR on her behalf. I ask the man to explain to her again that I'm a journalist, not an officer from UNHCR, but that I will be writing about her story so that the people in other parts of the world can know what is happening to refugees like her in Malaysia. She seems to understand as she extends her hand toward me.

I take her hand in mine and thank her for her courage and her time. I also want to tell Zaida not to let her children beg on the street. But looking around at the shack I have no other alternative to offer her. The man has already started the engine of the little bike and we are late to see the next family.