KOTA KINABALU: The federal government should reconsider its plan to issue special renewable visiting passes to Rohingya refugees as the country could eventually end up with similar problems faced by Sabah, warned Deputy Home Minister Azis Jamman.
Speaking to the media after attending a dialogue on legal matters concerning foreigners, marriage, bankruptcy and child adoption here today, Azis said personally he was against any proposal to give Rohingya refugees the IMM13 documents which would allow them to stay in the country. The IMM13 permit allows them to work and receive health or education services for a period of one year.
“At a recent Cabinet meeting, I said this and stood my ground on the issue.
“We have experienced this in Sabah with refugees from the Philippines in the past.
“Since we gave them IMM13, these people look like they intend to stay here forever. The federal government should learn from Sabah’s mistakes.
“In Sabah, they are not leaving because many have intermarried with locals and now, they are related to locals.
“If the federal government wants to accept the Rohingya and give them IMM13, then do it in Malaya.
“This is my personal stand though, not that of the ministry.
“As a Sabah leader, if possible, we don’t want a single Rohingya sent here. Instead, we should pressure the Myanmar government to accept their own people back.”
Asked why these refugees holding the IMM13 permit in Sabah, numbering about 40,000 now, were not sent home even after the end of the war in the southern Philippines, Azis said the problem was that the Philippine government did not want them.
He said the Malaysian government had in the past tried to send these people back, but they were turned away as the Philippine government insisted these people were not Filipinos.
“So, what can we do with these people? Kill them? That’s not fair. This is our problem now. Children of IMM13 holders do not have documents.
“If the Filipino government does not want to accept IMM13 holders, what makes you think they will accept these non-documented children?”
Therefore, Azis said the time had come for all parties to band together and find a permanent solution to the problem because as it stands, Sabah is stuck with these inland foreigners.
He said in Malaya, the people were supporting calls to award citizenship to stateless people or at least to give some kind of documents to allow them to stay and live here.
He gave an assurance that these documents do not mean the government will give citizenship to these people.
Immigration: It was just a census
Earlier in his presentation, Sabah Immigration Department director Musa Sulaiman owned up to the fiasco last month which saw thousands of foreigners swarming the immigration office in Kota Kinabalu to apply for IMM13 documents for themselves and their children.
“The problem is, we failed to handle the crowd. That’s why it looked bad. But the exercise was meant to ‘profile’ them.
“I received an instruction from my superior to conduct a census so we could track them, record where they are and who their parents are,” he said.
A video of the mad rush by foreigners went viral, causing anger among locals who feared the government was actively registering foreigners to become citizens.
Chief Minister Shafie Apdal later said he was not informed of this census exercise and had summoned those responsible to explain what had happened.
Immigration Department director-general Mustafar Ali later explained the operation was only part of the department’s census on Filipino refugees and their children in Sabah to ensure their rights to education and health were upheld in accordance with international law.
Musa said he accepted the blame for the negative perception but insisted the registration of refugees should continue after this for security purposes.
Later on, Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) director Ismail Ahmad said there were an estimated 500,000 inland foreigners in Sabah although the number could be bigger as they do not come out into the open.
These foreigners, he said, include those foreigners who came into Sabah before Malaysia was formed, holders of various documents issued by the government, the sea gypsies, and those with IMM13 permits and their children.
“Sabah is the only state to have this group of people. It is difficult to give them citizenship for various reasons.
“For example, the Pala’uh (sea gypsies) people sometimes come onshore but they travel all over, north and south, east and west.
“The other day, some of these sea gypsies were detained in Indonesia and the Indonesian authorities contacted us to ask if these were our people because one of them held a document saying he was from Kg Bangau-Bangau in Semporna. But they are not our citizens.”
He also pointed out that many locals found themselves stateless because of parents whose marriages were not properly registered or recognised.
In Sabah, he said the status of the children will always follow the mother’s. If the mother is a foreigner, the child will be registered as a foreigner as well even though the father is a local.
Between 2005 and 2018, out of 43,604 applications, the department had approved 11,388 citizenships for foreigners and stateless people in Sabah. - FMT
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