The rise of the vigilantes

It makes little sense that Anwar Ibrahim and the Pakatan Rakyat choose to make scapegoats of the Bangladeshis.

COMMENT

By Stephen Doss

Malaysia’s 13th general election must rank as the most heated and disputed ever, even more so than Malaysia’s 1969 elections.

For the first time ever, vigilante individuals and groups took it upon themselves to patrol the streets and detain people who they felt were not eligible to vote.

According to the Asia Pacific Human Rights Information Centre, Malaysia has about two million documented migrant workers, and at least two million undocumented migrant workers.

In 2010, it was reported that there were about 1.8 million foreign workers spread across sectors such as manufacturing (688,886), construction (288,722), plantation (256,382), domestic workers (224,544), services (180,890), with the rest being in agriculture.

Majority of these workers come from the following countries ranked according to number of workers: Indonesia (917,932), Bangladesh (307,366), Nepal (175,810), Myanmar (140,260), India (113,797), and Vietnam (74,842).

It is common knowledge that the largest bloc of undocumented migrant workers numbering over two million are Indonesians, most probably for the simple reason being that they are our nearest neighbours.

It would therefore make sense that if the BarisanNasional wanted to commit fraud through alien voting, they would have turned to the Indonesians, and not Bangladeshis.

In fact a lot of Indonesians who have been living in this country probably speak the local language even better than a lot of Malaysians, making such a plan, if it existed, virtually fool-proof.

It therefore makes little sense that Anwar Ibrahim and the Pakatan Rakyat choose to make scapegoats of the Bangladeshis.

Which begs the question, why did Anwar and Pakatan go after the Bangladeshis when it would have made more sense to go after the Indonesians?

One must wonder if they had chosen go after the Bangladeshis because of their smaller numbers and weaker political clout, or whether Anwar made a calculated move to go after the Bangladeshis knowing that there would be a lesser fall-out than if he were to go after the Indonesians.

Migrant workers stigmatised

As it turns out, PKR’s mouthpiece the Suara Keadilan and a DAP politician have been forced to make pubic apologies to dark skinned Malaysians who they accused of being Bangladeshis.

KIMMA,the Indian Muslim political party, too has made numerous police reports claiming that their members have been harassed by vigilantes across the country because of their skin colour.

In a post-GE13 forum last week, a panelist who is a local academic recounted how three of his research assistants, all Malaysian Indians, were detained for five hours in Kuala Terengganu by vigilantes who accused them of being Bangladeshis and trying to vote.

They subsequently lodged police reports because they were not able to vote as they were only released after 5pm.

So far despite all these revelations, neither Bersih, the self-appointed polls watchdog, nor the Bar Council which often speaks up on behalf of the Malaysian Bar on matters related to human rights abuses have made any comment with regards to this criminal targetting of a migrant community.

They have been quick to add their voice to that of Pakatan in claiming that there have been allegations of fraud in the last elections, but nothing so far on the issue of vigilantes taking the law into their own hands.

Lest we forget, Article 8 of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia provides that “All persons are equal before the law and is entitled to equal protection of the law.”

By using the term “person”, as opposed to “citizen”, the constitutional provision makes it most clear that this guarantee of rights extends to all persons, including migrant workers.

Stephen Doss is political observer, advisor to the Social Media Chambers of Malaysia and can be found on tweeter @stephendoss