How many more must die before we reform immigration detention?

 Detention must never become a place where illness is ignored, hope disappears and death becomes an accepted outcome.

From Glorene Das

Tenaganita is profoundly shocked and outraged by the revelation that 465 people, including 12 children, have died in Malaysia’s immigration detention depots over the past five years.

These are not merely numbers in a parliamentary reply. They are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and children whose lives ended while under the custody and responsibility of the Malaysian government.

Every death in detention is a tragedy. The 465 deaths represent a catastrophic failure of our immigration detention system and demand immediate national accountability.

For Tenaganita, this is not a new crisis.

Since 1996, we have consistently documented and exposed the horrendous conditions inside Malaysia’s immigration detention centres. Through our memorandum nearly three decades ago, we highlighted severe overcrowding, inadequate healthcare, poor sanitation, prolonged detention, lack of transparency and the devastating human impact of immigration detention.

Successive governments have acknowledged concerns, yet meaningful structural reform has remained elusive. Today, almost 30 years later, we are confronted with the same painful reality.

What has changed? How many more people must die before Malaysia recognises that the current detention regime is fundamentally broken?

Most migrants, refugees and asylum seekers detained in these centres are not violent criminals.

Their “offence” is often an administrative immigration violation, such as lacking valid documentation, overstaying a visa or becoming undocumented due to failures within recruitment and labour systems that they did not create.

Yet they are deprived of their liberty, often for prolonged periods, under conditions that continue to raise grave concerns about health, dignity and human rights.

We must ask difficult but necessary questions.

Why are migrants, refugees and asylum seekers being treated more harshly than those who commit serious crimes? Why are people being detained for administrative immigration offences while traffickers, labour exploiters, smugglers, rapists, child abusers and corrupt syndicates continue to operate with impunity?

Why does Malaysia continue to invest in prolonged detention instead of addressing the real perpetrators of exploitation?

As an organisation that has worked with detainees for decades, Tenaganita knows that many under detention simply require assistance to return safely to their countries of origin. Others are refugees and asylum seekers who require protection, documentation or resettlement. They should not be left to languish indefinitely behind barbed wire.

People cannot be kept in detention until they rot away or die.

Detention must never become a place where illness is ignored, hope disappears and death becomes an accepted outcome.

The death of 12 children is especially heartbreaking and indefensible. No child belongs in immigration detention. Malaysia must immediately end the detention of children and adopt community-based alternatives that uphold the best interests of every child.

For almost 30 years, Tenaganita has made recommendations, submitted memoranda, documented abuses and engaged successive governments. We could repeat those recommendations today, but what would be the point if they continue to fall on deaf ears?

The solutions are known. What is lacking is the political will to implement them.

Until Malaysia chooses humanity over prolonged detention, protection over punishment, and accountability over indifference, more lives will be lost.

The next death in immigration detention will not be because we did not know what needed to be done. It will be because we chose not to act. - FMT

Glorene Das is executive director of rights group Tenaganita and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.