Lawyer slams all or nothing approach on citizenship changes

 

Zaid Malek said the persistence of statelessness in Malaysia was primarily due to administrative failures rather than gaps in the law,

KUALA LUMPUR: A human rights advocate has decried the government’s all or nothing approach to the proposed constitutional amendments on citizenship.

Lawyers for Liberty director Zaid Malek said a recent package of proposed changes to the law contained an essential provision to provide automatic citizenship for children born overseas to Malaysian mothers.

However, the rest of the package of constitutional amendments were regressive, giving rise to calls to separate the provisions on overseas-born children from the rest of the proposals contained in the constitution amendment bill 2024.

“The issue now is because it is packed in the same bill, that is why there were calls to decouple it,” he said last night at a forum on stateless people in Malaysia.

“But they (the government) have not made any indication that they would do that. So it’s either all or nothing at all.”

“If the government is reluctant to decouple the citizenship amendment, then they should drop it altogether,” he said.

The government proposed to allow overseas-born children of Malaysian mothers to acquire automatic citizenship by operation of law through the mother, whereas current law provides such a right only to children whose fathers are citizens.

However, under another proposed amendment, the right of automatic citizenship will apply only to children born after the new law comes into force – leaving thousands of children born before that date in limbo and effectively stateless.

Zaid argued that the current provisions under the constitution are better than the proposed amendments.

He also argued that the persistence of statelessness in Malaysia was primarily due to administrative failures rather than gaps in the law.

Zaid criticised the procedures of the national registration department (JPN) as contradicting the highest law of the land.

He alleged that there had been instances where registration officers denied foundlings the initiation of their citizenship process, despite a constitutional entitlement, with the officers often using the excuse of “it’s a specific case” as a basis for denial, even when presented with a Federal Court ruling.

The constitutional amendment bill, which was tabled in the Dewan Rakyat in March, raised an uproar of fierce public criticism, causing the government to abandon the proposed amendments relating to foundlings, stateless children, and vulnerable people.

The decision was based on the weight of opinions gathered after intensive meetings with MPs, party representatives, legal experts, state agency representatives, and the chief whips of all parties.

Among other provisions, the bill seeks to lower to 18 the age at which a person may apply for citizenship. The current law sets the age at 21. - FMT