When I think of those …
OVER the Easter weekend, I had plenty of time to read the cuttings from old newspapers. On every waking day, I must read a newspaper or some publication – a habit acquired since school time. To me there’s no alternative to a piece of paper that carries news or information of some importance. Fake news it may sometimes be, but one must be able to discern and separate the chaff from the grain.
I can read news online but my problem is how to cut out the passage that I would like to keep in my scrapbook – another childhood habit. Those refugees I’ve been reading about the refugees who are living in limbo in many countries – accounts of their difficulty coping with life after they have landed in some country; of the daily longing to go back home, or of dreaming of family members joining them. Many without hope have given up altogether by resorting to suicide. Others have no choice but to stay put even though they are not welcome by many of the locals.
These people – including children and women – have experienced extreme physical and mental hardships: bobbling on the open sea day and night in rickety boats, at the mercy of the elements, and having little or no food or without fresh water – just to get away from the home country that is in a terrible mess – politically, economically, or religiously. If you were in their shoes, would you not think of going away to save your life too? Favourite destinations Two years ago, I read a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report talking about some 22.5 million refugees in the world. Of this number, only a fraction has been resettled in third countries. For instance, only 126,300 refugees were resettled in 37 countries in 2016. What happen to the rest? Placing refugees in a third country can take as long as four to 10 years before settlement. So imagine how difficult it is for UNHCR to find those countries which are willing to accept the rest of the 22 million plus.
According to the World Bank, among the most attractive countries for refugees and asylum seekers are Singapore, Thailand and, believe it or not, our beloved Malaysia. Many of these people, who have landed on our shores, have been living either as refugees or illegal immigrants. This year, we expect to see many more illegal immigrants heading our way; mainly refugees from Myanmar, in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
Those registered as refugees with the local office of the UNHCR are relatively better off than the other migrants in terms of welfare aid. Their stay in this country is supposed to be temporary meaning, someday in the near future, they will have to be transferred to a third country which is willing to accept them. Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and, technically, is not obliged to offer them permanent settlement here. Still the refugees have been treated well on humanitarian grounds while the UNHCR is catering for their welfare, while, at the same time, persuading a third country to accept their wards on a permanent basis. But where in the world can one find such a country? It is getting more and more difficult to find one a third country now that Australia, the United States, and Thailand are getting strict with restrictions of unsponsored immigrants into those countries. In this part of the world, only the Philippines, Cambodia and East Timor have signed the Treaty but not many of the refugees and or asylum seekers go there. They have their choice of countries. The holding country has to bear the burden of sharing facilities with them even at the expense of their own people.
What about those illegal migrants to Malaysia – those not classified as refugees under the Convention? Many of them have been sent back to their own home countries under the amnesty exercise. Are there any more illegal immigrants in the country? Why people migrate In its April Fool’s edition, the venerable thesundaypost published an article by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. A statement that “migration linked to low agricultural productivity, natural disasters such as droughts and typhoons, failed deals to secure land rights, and conflicts” attributed to Alvin Chandra of the University of Queensland (Australia) caused me some stress. It sounds familiar in terms of the situation in Sarawak. Those deals to secure land rights – don’t they remind us in Sarawak of the quarrels between leaseholders and the NCR landowners over the same tracts of land?