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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Foreign Muslims no longer ‘welcome’ in Sabah


Local Muslims have realised that they need to stand united with their local non-Muslim brothers, Dusun and Chinese, against the clearly neo-colonialist policies of Putrajaya.
COMMENT
Foreign Minister Anifah Aman’s criticism of the National Registration Department (NRD) on Sunday for embarking on the issuance of belated birth certificates and MyKads to 40,000 people in Semporna alone is telling.
Anifah, a Pathan-Dusun, wants the exercise stopped on the grounds that there could not be that many Malaysians in one small east coast district alone without personal documents.
He fears, as many people do, that the applicants were not genuine considering the large number of illegal immigrants in that area particularly along the entire eastern seaboard.
Interestingly, Minister in the Chief Minister’s Department Nasir Sakaran is backing the NRD’s exercise in Semporna on the grounds that it had been approved by Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
Nasir, a Suluk, has the support of former chief minister Harris Salleh who has often pontificated sanctimoniously on the power of the federal government to issue Malaysian personal documents, implying that they can be given to any Tom, Dick and Harry.
It was the same Harris, an Indian-Barunai, who “prophesised” in 1985 after his dramatic fall from power that the new Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) state government would not last as “many people were now getting blue ICs”.
Harris’ “prophecy” came true in 1994 when PBS came in with a wafer-thin majority of two seats against the 23 seats picked up by Umno (20) and Sabah Progressive Party (three), its breakaway ally from PBS. The PBS government, headed by Joseph Pairin Kitingan, fell a month later on the back of massive defections engineered by then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
The 48 seats in the State Legislative Assembly have since 1994 increased to 60 with the addition of another 12 Muslim seats to add to the previous 20 seats, while the non-Muslim seats remained frozen at 28 and unnoticed by the world. In Parliament, non-Muslim seats from Sabah remained at 12 while the Muslim ones were increased by five to 13.
It’s not strange that Muslim seats should increase while non-Muslim ones remain frozen as in 1994 considering the large number of illegal immigrants placed on the electoral rolls. There’s no other logical explanation although it’s claimed that Muslim seats are small while non-Muslim ones are large but this merely further masks the real picture.
The stark differences in public between Anifah and Nasir on the NRD is the clearest example of the increasing disconnect between local Muslims and other Muslims, mostly from neighbouring countries, who have had an easy time so far in getting their hands on Malaysian personal documents, getting on the electoral rolls and even becoming instant natives and Bumiputera. The term “Bumiputera” is an umbrella political term to cover the Orang Asli, the natives and Malays, the last not being stated in the Federal Constitution as natives.

Open secret
At one time, the opposition to the illegal immigrant menace came mostly from the Dusun – including Kadazan or urban Dusun and Murut – and the Chinese. Now, it’s no longer so.
The local Muslims – Bajau, Suluk, Barunai, Irranun, and Dusun – have jumped on the anti-illegal bandwagon as well. Except for the Dusun Muslim, the other local Muslims are the descendents of immigrants who came in a long time ago, some dating back 300 years, but quite a number since the formation of Malaysia in 1963.
The new immigrant influx, mostly Muslim illegals, has many Bajau and Suluk from the Philippines. Elsewhere, they include Bugis from Indonesia, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The Bugis dominate the taxi and mini bus trade in Sabah and even win a considerable number of government scholarships at the expense of local Muslims. Quite a number of foreign Muslims have made it into the State Legislative Assembly and Parliament and this is an open secret in Sabah.
There may be grudging acceptance of the illegal immigrants in Sabah but only so long as they don’t get their hands on Malaysian personal documents, get on the electoral rolls and go on to claim instant native and Bumiputera status.
Indeed, it has been estimated that 600,000 of the illegal immigrants at the very minimum have Malaysian personal documents and there are a further 1.1 million of them in the state. Meanwhile, local Sabahans number just 1.5 million. These figures are from 2005 when the state was estimated to have a population of 3.2 million. The total population figure now stands at some 3.6 million.
There’s no doubt that Sabah is a large state, indeed a country, with acute manpower shortages and labour needs. The law provides for the orderly entry of foreign labour but either many can’t be bothered or find that they have to fork out steep fees to work legally in Sabah. Hence, the illegal immigrant phenomenon in the state continues as employers, the authorities and even locals who employ illegals as casual labour look the other way.
The bottomline is that illegal immigrants provide cannon fodder for Putrajaya’s divide-and-rule tactics in Sabah.
At first, the federal government excluded the non-Muslim natives in Sabah, as in Sarawak, from the benefits of Article 153 of the Federal Constitution and the New Economic Policy (NEP). Having driven this political and economic wedge among locals, Muslim and non-Muslim, the powers-that-be next embarked on localising the overwhelmingly Muslim illegal immigrants.
That strategy seemed to sit well with the local Muslims as long as the non-Muslims had the upper hand in the political power equation in the state. Now, it’s no longer local Muslims versus other locals in the politics of the state. It’s local Muslims aligned with local non-Muslims versus other Muslims as the last factor make their presence felt in the economy and in the politics of the state.
Neo-colonialist policies
Nowhere is this development more apparent than in the fact that foreign Muslims are allegedly eyeing the chief minister’s post and are impatient to get their hands on it. It is this factor, more than anything else, that’s behind Anifah’s outburst over the NRD’s mobile teams being in Semporna to literally hand out MyKads to any Tom, Dick and Harry.
Local Muslims are now beginning to realise that not only do they have to share their opportunities with foreign Muslims, they are in danger of being forced to share the chief minister’s post as well with the latter. Sharing would eventually mean losing the position entirely as what has happened to the Dusuns and Chinese.
Putrajaya’s hidden agenda in Sabah is to “cheat just enough” to ensure that the Dusun and Chinese don’t get their hands ever again on the chief minister’s post. It makes little difference to them whether the chief minister is a local Muslim or a foreigner so long as the Sabahans don’t unite against the federal government. The need to keep adding illegals to the electoral rolls arises from their tendency to go back home, move to Peninsular Malaysia and from there abroad, or even move to non-strategic seats.
The chickens have now come home to roost.
Local Muslims have realised, albeit belatedly, that they need to stand united with their local non-Muslim brothers, Dusun and Chinese, against the clearly neo-colonialist policies of Putrajaya in Sabah, and by extension in Sarawak.
This realisation is apparent in the re-emergence of the United Sabah National Organisation (Usno) as a force in the opposition. The party is among those pushing for a promised Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants in Sabah. It’s feared that the NRD exercise in Semporna may be among Putrajaya’s fait accompli initiatives in the state before the RCI is set up.
There are also clear indications, Anifah-Nasir being one, that the various factions in Umno in the state may no longer be able to work together for long given the absence of an external enemy in the state from among the locals, the estrangement with Usno, and the increasing role either directly or indirectly of the illegals in the politics of the state.

22 comments:

  1. There is a need to set in place additional precautionary measures to prevent immigrants from taking advantage of the ongoing National Registration Department’s (NRD) mobile registration drives to acquire Malaysian citizenship.

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    1. Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) vice president Datuk Radin Malleh who suggested this, said although certain mechanisms were already in place, the NRD still needs to be extra careful to ensure that illegal immigrants are not mistakenly registered as locals and given Malaysian birth certificates and identity cards (ICs). “We ask the relevant authorities to be extra careful in registering the birth certificates and identity documents, so that they do not fall into the wrong hands especially illegal immigrants, as this could jeapordise the country’s sovereignty and future,” he said.

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    2. Radin who is also Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Department said the mobile registration was one of the government’s way to help the people, but to a certain extent, there might be a hint of truth to the association’s claims.

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    3. He added that there were rules in place under the Federal Constitution for foreigners to get their citizenship and NRD must ensure that everyone abides by this.“If there is any truth that these immigrants are able to get the Malaysian identity cards and claim their citizenship that way, to me personally, it is not the right way. “We hope with the high-tech mechanisms that they mentioned, NRD will be able to properly screen them.”

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    4. He noted that amongst the requirements of the Federal Constitution, one must reside in this country for a certain period of time, be fluent in the Malay language and the cultures of the country and take an oath before they can be granted citizenship, not simply impersonating as a local.

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    5. Seriously this is sucks if we continue to have such kind of issues.

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  2. Although illegal immigrants may try, mechanisms are in place to ensure they do not get registered for birth certificates or ICs at mobile registration drives carried out by the National Registration Department (NRD) in rural areas.

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  3. It is impossible for them to get Malaysian birth certificates and citizenship, said NRD Director, Ismail Ahmad. "We are actually trying to help Malaysians, especially those in the interior whose children are without or with late-registration birth certificate and ICs," he said "It might be true that a lot of them (illegals) come and wait with all the rest of the eligible people. But he might not know that their journey is only up to there, standing and waiting because they won't be entertained.
    "For legal foreigners, we will issue a red birth certificate to the children whose parent, either the mother or father is a Malaysian.

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  4. For locals who have no documents due to factors such as lack of awareness and living too far from the city, we will issue a green birth certificate (original Malaysian birth certificate). "We issue these documents to legal foreigners so that they can go to their embassy or consulate to get their passports done, whereas for our locals, we have to help them get their identification documents done so that they can go to school and so on," Ismail said.

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  5. He said the outreach programme currently being held in Semporna to register locals without valid identification documents, is meant to help the locals.

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  6. He said that since the programme started on Feb. 20, he said a total of 3,067 Malaysians were found to be without birth certificates.A total of 193 children had court endorsement to get ICs while 731 of them are still without the court's endorsement.

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  7. He pointed out that before a programme is held, the NRD would first have a meeting with the District Officer and all community leaders of an area, then give them the family information form to be distributed to those applying for documentation.
    "After that, all the forms will be sent to the NRD to be screened to verify whether those in the list are genuinely Malaysian, before putting the list out and calling the people involved to come and register after a couple of days," Ismail said. It is only after screening that the department would set a date to conduct the mobile registration programme to the said village, he said.

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  8. He said representatives from the Immigration Department, special branch, court, Election Commission, and Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission among others will also be present then. "This shows just how strict we are in issuing documents to the people. If there really are suspicious cases and people trying to crawl their way into getting a citizenship, Ismail said they would straightaway refer the cases to the police (special branch) before proceeding further. "For example, there were one or two cases in Sandakan recently, where the village head was trying to support the application of illegals to be registered to obtain Malaysian documents. They were caught and convicted," he revealed.

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  9. Further on, he said among those, who the NRD strictly do not entertain, are the palaau or sea gypsies. "These people live without documents, and we cannot do anything about it.,Apart from that, those found to be illegal immigrants trying to get citizenship or identification documents also will not be entertained," he said. "Only genuine locals or those born here, with one of their parents being a Malaysian will be entertained, but we still differentiate them using red (query certificate)," Ismail stressed.

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  10. Meanwhile, he explained that some of the reasons behind some people not having any valid documents are due to logistics. "Some of them have to spend an amount of money and time and they just don't feel like doing it. Some may think it's not important while some may feel that it would be troublesome because their father has more than one wife, and things just become more complicated. "Some do not want to go through all the hassle of having to go to relevant agencies and departments because they might have got married kampung style, and so on," he pointed out.

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  11. Hopefully Anifah Aman's advice will be taken into consideration by the NRD, halt the approval of documents until the matter regarding 40,000 stateless children can be investigated by the RCI.

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  12. Sabahans should always unite regardless of their race or religion.

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    Replies
    1. We are already united but somehow others are invading us.

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  13. sbelum berikan sijil kelahiran, kena pastikan mereka benar2 anak2 jati Sabah, jgn hingga PATI yang mendapatnya.

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  14. I don't understand why it have to be " foreign muslims ".

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  15. ICs and birth certs shouldn't be treated as jokes.

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  16. bukankah lebih baik tubuhkan satu badan pemantau khas untuk mengawasi program pendaftaran bergerak ini?? dan badan itu mestilah dianggotai oleh pihak2 yang membantah pelaksanaan pendaftaran bergerak ini..

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