Amnesty International Says Repression Of Migrant Workers In Malaysia Must Stop

Malaysia has been promoted as a good destination for international travelers, retirees, and job seekers in Asia. But it’s also had serious and persistent problems with discrimination, not only in housing, education and work, but in working conditions for immigrants. This seems to be an endemic problem with Malaysia’s foreign manual laborers, who suffer conditions similar to those experienced by Asian workers (skilled and unskilled) in Dubai and other Middle Eastern countries:

“A report released by Amnesty International on Wednesday urged Malaysia to end migrant abuse and reform labour laws in order to better protect foreigners working in the country. The rights group said that many migrant workers are being forced to work long hours in harsh conditions and are subject to rape, abuse and unpaid labour. The rights group says these conditions amount to little short of ‘bonded labour’, adding that laws that allow employers to hold workers’ passports prevented them from leaving abusive workplaces for fear of arrest.

The report entitled ‘Trapped: The Exploitation of Migrant Workers in Malaysia’ accuses the Malaysian authorities of extortion, exploitation, arbitrary arrest and facilitating human trafficking of migrant workers through ‘loose regulation of recruitment agents and through laws and policies that fail to protect workers.’ More than 200 migrant workers, both legal and illegal, were interviewed for the compilation of the report. Amnesty has called on the Malaysian government to investigate abuses in the workplace and by police. Migrant workers constitute more than a fifth of the Malaysia’s work force.”

At a 10,000 man protest in 2007 by Hindu Malays over discrimination in favor of native-born Muslim Malays (bhumiputras), a Hindraf (Hindu rights action force) spokesman said:

“They [Malaysian Indians] are frustrated and have no job opportunities in the government or the private sector. They are not given business licenses or places in university.” (Reuters, November 25, 2007)

The Indians were also incensed by demolitions of Hindu temples at the time.

Last year (Sept, 2009), the government decided to ban the use of English in teaching math and physics to students, a practice introduced by former Prime Minister Mahathir in 2003 as essential to Malaysia’s competitiveness as a destination for foreign businesses. The reason given for the ban, which will take effect in 2012, is the poor performance of the students in those subjects and the deterioration in English language skills, but some consider the real reason to be intense lobbying against English by Malay nationalists.

Native Malays continue to be Muslim by force.  Take the famous case of Azlina Jailani who at 26 converted to Christianity and changed her name to Lina Joy. Under Malay law she’s still a Muslim, since Malay Muslims are forbidden from converting. She’s been fighting in the courts since 1999 to become a Christian legally.

Every Malaysian citizen over the age of 12 must carry an identification card, called a MyKad, which states the bearer’s religion. In 1999, Joy, a sales assistant, succeeded in getting officials to change her name on the card. Although she said she had been baptized in 1998, she was not able to have the word Islam removed from the card. Her fight to do that is what got her to Federal Court.

It is not possible to be an ethnic Malay in Malaysia without being a Muslim. Apostasy or conversion is a punishable offence in most states in Malaysia, either with a fine, a jail sentence or both. Muslims, most of them ethnic Malays, make up 60 percent of Malaysia’s population and dominate public institutions in an uneasy balance that has remained touchy since anti-Chinese race riots in 1969 that are presumed to have killed hundreds on either side of the ethnic divide. Some 25 percent of Malaysians are ethnic Chinese, followed by Indians with about 11 percent. Indigenous peoples and non-citizens make up the rest.”

(Asia Sentinel, 27th April, 2007)

Joy’s case was finally dismissed in May 2007 and the Federal court ruled that only the Shariya court could remove Joy’s identification as a Muslim on her national ID card.

This is “secular”  Malaysia.

And meanwhile, statists in the Anglophone world continue to labor under the delusion that a national ID card is somehow in the interests of the citizenry and intended to protect them from harm.

As the case of Malaysia shows, ID cards are always about control of the population.