Hundreds of children are held in deplorable conditions in immigration detention centres, with some placed in the same area as grown men due to overcrowding, claims child rights activist Hartini Zainuddin.
This is happening despite NGOs proposing to the government alternatives to detention for unaccompanied minors in immigration cases for the past five years, she said.
Hartini said that at a detention centre she visited, boys aged 12 and older are placed in the same area as adult men, while the other children are placed with adult women.
“The situation is very bad. They sleep on the floor. At one detention centre I visited, you can smell the stench emanating from a barrack housing 300 men and boys.
“It was all high walls and small windows. The place looked like a cowshed, and that was A-grade detention centre that I visited.
“You can pretty up the place all you want, but the fact remains that children do not belong there,” she said.
Hartini said most of the time the children are detained with their families, but cases of unaccompanied minors are not uncommon.
Children registered with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or those whose nationalities can be established have a higher chance of being accounted for, but stateless children are likely to remain locked up the longest.
“So they just stay there. Sometimes they are deported (unaccompanied) but in other cases, when they are stateless, we really don’t know what happens to them,” she said when contacted.
“We have also heard of cases where children were deported to the wrong countries,” she told Malaysiakini.
Immigration: Cases involving children now prioritised
On Tuesday, the Immigration Department released two unaccompanied toddlers who had been held at the Bukit Jalil Immigration Detention Centre since June 14.
Their mothers, who held valid visas to remain in Malaysia, were not with the toddlers when they were picked up during an Immigration Department raid on an apartment in the Klang Valley.
The toddlers were released and deported following intervention from the Philippines Embassy and the Women and Community Development Ministry.
The Immigration Department said it will now prioritise cases involving children instead of processing the detainees according to the order of arrest.
There are 363 foreign children aged under 12 currently detained at detention depots nationwide.
Government dragging feet on alternatives to detention
Yesterday, Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin (photo) said his ministry is looking into the proposal of alternatives to detention for minors caught in immigration raids.
However, Hartini said the proposal by a task force of NGOs to run a pilot project on an alternative to detention for children has been on the table for five years.
She said the proposal is a pilot project involving five unaccompanied Rohingya children.
The project would see the five children housed in an NGO-run children’s hostel and attend school while the case manager works with relevant embassies or the community to find the children’s family or guardians.
“That is all we are asking for – five children – but it has dragged on, and we are not sure where the hiccup is,” she said, adding that the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry have been supportive of the project.
However, the task force’s proposal has thus far been “bounced back” between agencies, including the Immigration Department, the Welfare Department, while children continue to languish in detention centres.
“It takes the detention of two toddlers for the Home Ministry to make a statement that they are looking into 'alternatives to detention'.
“I hope ‘looking into’ does not mean another five years of waiting (for the pilot project to be approved),” she said.
In January,Suhakam urged the government to review all laws which subject children to detention without trial.
The commission said detaining children contravenes the Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC), which Malaysia is a party to.
It said children in detention develop physical and psychological health problems because facilities in detention centres do not cater to their needs. - Mkini
Not only ph gov does not fulfill their election promises, now their ministers are behaving like umno goons in governing this country. They just being politicians thats all. Ph politicians, umno bn politicians, they are the same breed. They dont care of poeple's suffrage,to them the important thing is being able to play politics among themselves.
ReplyDeleteThen what will happen to the rakyat? Ahh.. The rakyat.. Let them be fooled and eat shits.