Illegals on the rise, special task force silent

Sabah's demographic landscape has been infused with a new 'Melayu' race, which is overtaking the native Bajaus and Irranuns.

COMMENT

Decades after its inception, Sabahans are now asking what has happened to the Federal Special Task Force for Sabah and Labuan (FSTF), set up in Sabah with the aim of rounding up illegal immigrants and cleansing the state of them.

The FSTF in Sabah, set up during the premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, has completely avoided the media in the past years.

It has not issued any statements or disclosed its progress reports on what it had achieved so far on its assigned task.

And no one has ever asked if the FSTF is still around for the same functions.

Ten years ago, the FSTF was touted by federal leaders as the answer to solving the problem of illegal immigrants in Sabah.

Almost every few weeks it churned out reports of progress on its task in rounding up illegal immigrants, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia.

At that time, de facto Law Minister Nazri Aziz told Parliament that there were about 100,000 of the illegals in Sabah.

But now the number of illegal immigrants in Sabah, according to some, have sky-rocketed to 1.5 million!

Natives becoming a minority

Whither the FSTF?

“It has become a big problem to the natives of Sabah, the genuine ones,” said Eric Majimbun, deputy president of opposition Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP).

Majimbun, at a SAPP talk at Kampung Mantanau in Kota Belud recently, disclosed government statistics that revealed something had been done to change the demographic landscape of Sabah whereby a new “Melayu” race, which had always been a tiny population in Sabah, is overtaking the always much bigger number of Bajaus and Irranuns.

Together, the Melayu, the Bajaus and Irranuns and other smaller Muslim communities have “swallowed” up the Kadazandusun-Muruts group which had always been the single biggest majority race in Sabah.

Currently, the Kadazandusun-Murut (including Muslims) are estimated at 800,000.

Majimbun, who is also Sepanggar MP, said bona-fide Sabahan natives are being eliminated and reduced to becoming a minority to ensure the hegemony of a political party from the peninsula that thrived on race superiority and religious sentiments.

“In the statistics report, we still have the Bajaus and Irranuns, but we can see a sudden jump in the number of ‘Melayu’ in Sabah,” he said.

“They had multiplied very quickly in such a very big percentage, maybe over 200 percent, in a matter of few years,” he added.

Who is the real Sabahan?

Where are these people from? “This is a big question for us,” Majimbun said to a shocked audience.

He said that SAPP in its effort to differentiate bona-fide Sabahans from the illegal immigrants, would introduce Sabah identity cards to its own citizens if it forms the state government.

“Through this effort, at least we know who are the real Sabahans and who are not,” he added.

Meanwhile, a check with old records showed that in 2001, the FSTF had revealed there were 17,580 foreign children studying in Sabah schools, but it claimed then they were offspring of foreigners with legal status.

If indeed true they were offspring of legal foreigners, then what about those of real illegal immigrants?

What is going on in the three temporary detention centres in Kota Kinabalu, Sadakan and Tawau all these years?

Huge numbers of new ‘Melayu’

In 2001, PBS deputy president Dr Maximus Ongkili, then in the opposition, said it was unbelievable that there should be such a huge number of foreign students whose parents comprised employees of foreign consulates and multi-national companies, refugees and registered migrant workers.

“The explanation doesn’t make sense. How many foreign consulates and multi-national companies do we have in Sabah?” Ongkili asked.

“And why are registered foreign workers allowed to stay in Sabah that long until their offspring are of school-going age?”

Ongkili said even those classified as refugees are questionable because even after 20 years, they were still regarded as refugees.

“It is ridiculous that years after the civil war had ended in the southern Philippines and a decade after the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] has officially closed its operation in Sabah, there are still these so-called ‘Filipino refugees’ in the state.”

That was in 2001, what about now? There are claims that institutions of higher learning in Sabah are full of these so-called “Melayu”.

In fact, they are now given preference for employment in government offices over the other natives.

Such is the pathetic situation of the real natives in Sabah now; it bleeds our hearts to know.