Living in fear and desperation
some even anger.
“Since last year, they have rejected around 6,000 cases, so a lot of people are fed up here. It’s not safe anymore,” said Mung Khat, chairman of the Alliance of Chin Refugees (ACR).
Mung Khat is busier than most these days. His organisation assists Chins, often to secure their release from immigration detention, a spectre which looms over all refugees in Malaysia.
Since the UNHCR started withholding cards from Chins, he’s seen an increase in detention cases. And now, he can’t even help anymore. Without the cards, there is no basis to advocate for their release.
“Since June last year (2017), a UNHCR representative announced that they are going to start a fiveyear plan,” he claimed. “But we are not clear enough (on) what that plan is. They do it by themselves, without inviting the refugee community.”
To refugees in Malaysia, the UNHCR card is possibly the most important document they have. Without it, the state views them as undocumented migrants, who have little, if any, fundamental rights.
It grants benefits such as medical discounts, and more importantly, allows refugees to be recognised as people in need of protection.
Though Malaysia officially views refugees as illegal immigrants, authorities usually respect the UNHCR card and do not detain cardholders.
UNHCR representatives insist that there have been continued and ongoing consultation with community organisations like ACR. Towle points out that a meeting was even held with community leaders immediately after the protest in front of UNHCR’s office.
“I think it’s partly because they don’t like the news, it’s a bitter pill to swallow,” countered Towle.
Most of UNHCR’s resources today are being channelled to assisting Rohingya and Syrian refugees, whose situations are patently more desperate.
“People who’ve had the advantage of our support for 30 years or longer, who demonstrably, very clearly don’t need our protection anymore, need to face up with that reality,” said Towle.
“We’re not deserting them, we’re just trying to help them to understand the new reality, and help them manage the transition.”
Broken trust
But beyond the diplomacy, a deep distrust is evident. Chin community leaders repeatedly speak of meetings with UNHCR representatives where they are belittled and given little chance to express their views.
Meanwhile, high-level UNHCR officials privately blame the community leaders for not doing enough to prepare their people for this eventuality. Officials also speak, with resentment, of the 2014 refugee card scam that left UNHCR’s credibility in tatters.
The scam was exposed in an Al Jazeera documentary in 2014, but could have been taking place since 2009, when UNHCR was sending out mobile registration units to reach refugees who lived outside urban centres.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former UNHCR staff explained the scam to our journalists. According to him, UNHCR had asked Chin refugee organisations to compile lists of refugees who had yet to register with UNHCR. Apparently, community leaders started filling up the lists with names of refugees who had yet to arrive, then helped smuggle them to Malaysia. The number of Chins arriving in Malaysia skyrocketed.
At the time, UNHCR was issuing cards through a simplified registration process, which allowed asylum seekers whose claims were still yet to be verified through a full refugee status determination process, to obtain cards. This in itself would lead to a lot of confusion, as these asylum seekers were given the same cards as verified refugees.
Moreover, the simplified procedure was not as rigorous, which he claimed allowed some Chins to assume the identities of people on the list to gain refugee protection in Malaysia and a chance at resettlement to a third country.
A lot of money changed hands, reaching high-level UNHCR staff, according to the source.
UN officials from Geneva and Bangkok flew in to interrogate staff suspected of involvement. A spate of resignations followed those investigations, and, according to Towle, UNHCR’s registration systems were thoroughly revamped.
Now, only verified refugees receive cards, and the cards have security features that prevent forgery.
Although Towle denies that the cessation policy is linked to the card scam, he recognises the effects of the fallout: “The Chin defrauding (of UNHCR’s registra-
tion system) nearly collapsed our resettlement programme, so it is time to have a really hard look at the integrity of our system.
“We can’t keep claimants and asylum seekers in the refugee protection mandate if they don’t need it.”
No option
Towle insists that all three options for Chins – integration, resettlement, and repatriation – are realistic options to be considered moving forward.
But activists and members of the refugee community say the reality is quite different.
“It is a bad time to be a refugee in general, but really bad for refugees who are losing their protection status and are left with very few options,” said Lilianne Fan, a humanitarian activist whose work includes engaging with governments to advocate for better refugee policies.
“You have a rise of right-wing politics in so many parts of the world, and that has strengthened xenophobic, anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiments.
“Countries like Canada are becoming sanctuaries, but in the vast majority of countries, there is resistance.”
In the United States, where Chin refugees are primarily resettled to, the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies are thought to be behind the drastic downsizing of its refugee resettlement programme.
In the past two years alone, its refugee intake has been halved, resulting in the lowest numbers since the refugee programme was created in 1980.
In Malaysia, out of its approximately 160,000 refugees, only about 2,000 will get to be resettled in 2018, according to UNHCR.
If resettlement is a distant possibility, integration is simply unfeasible.
While many refugees have stayed here for years, the government steadfastly continues to view them as illegal immigrants, with no legal access to work and education.
“Refugees cannot be recognised without special legislation, or amendments to relevant laws such as the Immigration Act, Passport Act and even the Federal Constitution,” said Dr Nazira Abdul Rahman, deputy director of the National Security Council’s (NSC) Intelligence and National Crisis Management department. The NSC is the government agency put in charge of refugee issues.
“If the government wishes for institutional reform, the NSC will obey, but without compromising national security.”
Even UNHCR is only allowed to work in Malaysia solely on the good graces of the government. As a non-signatory to the UN’s Refugee Convention, Malaysia is not legally obligated to the international community to offer refugees state services or protection.
In government circles, there is a fear that refugees would flood through the borders if Malaysia starts offering formal refugee protections.
So instead, it adopts what some analysts call “a policy of not having a policy”.
Fear and desperation
Of all the options, repatriation is possibly the most feared.
When cards are rescinded, the reason officials cite is that Chin state is now safe for return, hence their refugee cards will not be renewed – a claim the Chins contest.
UNHCR repeatedly refers to its long-term assessments of the area, but when requested for its reports on the matter, admit there is no written report they can share.
This apparent lack of transparency angers the Chins, who regularly read news of violence and political instability in Chin state and Myanmar in general.
Just a few months before its June 13 announcement, a UN special rapporteur visited Myanmar and released a lengthy report. Although it primarily addressed the growing refugee crisis among the Rohingyas in Rakhine state, its report specifically cited armed conflict in the Chin state, in the Paletwa township bordering Rakhine.
It also raised questions about the continued persecution and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities.
Towle describes these conflicts as “isolated”, and not representative of the general situation.
Fan disagrees: “I don’t think Myanmar can be considered a safe country yet, for any ethnic minority.
“You see massive displacement and poverty in many areas, which is the effect of long-running conflict.”
While she admits there is less open conflict, the ceasefire between the government and ethnic minority groups continues to
be violated in many areas, including Chin state.
“These are developments that the Chin are looking at, and obviously they are not too convinced. As people who would like to facilitate their eventual return, we need to be patient and really take seriously the opinions of Chins themselves.”
Reports as recent as August have emerged of Chins being arrested upon return for lacking proper documentation. Most refugees flee their countries without documents, or lose them in the process.
And even as UNHCR advocates what its policies call a “safe and dignified return” for refugees who choose to, they admit that there is no formal repatriation procedure in place between the Malaysian and Myanmar governments.
At press time, the Myanmar embassy had no responded to R.AGE’s request for a comment.
This is not the first time that refugee protections for certain people groups have been phased out. Towle points to the Vietnamese “boat refugees” who arrived in the 1970s fleeing war.
They numbered over 250,000, almost double the current refugee population in Malaysia. Most of them were held in camps on Pulau Bidong, off the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia.
All were repatriated or resettled after conditions in Vietnam improved.
But Vietnamese refugees aside, UNHCR statistics show less than a thousand refugees have been repatriated since 1995.
Most of these were Iraqi and Sri Lankan refugees. Acehnese refugees, that at one point numbered as many as 9,000, were never formally repatriated.
Only 10 refugees from Myanmar (of unknown ethnicity) have ever been repatriated, and that was in 1996.
There is one way the Chins can return – deportation. Under current policies, Chins who no longer have refugee status will be treated like illegal immigrants.
“As the government, we will need to send them back,” said Deputy Home Minister Datuk Mohd Azis Jamman when we spoke to him about the Chins’ situation.
“That is the standard operating procedure. Since there is as yet no new directive from the government, (our operations) will stay as-is,” he added, noting that there are ongoing discussions in the Pakatan Harapan government to revise their policy on refugees.
“I pity them, they are in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he continued, “but I also pity Malaysians who are in need, some of whom live in far worse conditions.”
Mohd Azis also suggested that international pressure needs to be applied on Myanmar, to resolve the problems that are producing refugees.
“It is their problem, they need to accept their own people,” he said.
However, none of the Chins we interviewed expressed a desire to return, even though they expressed fondness and longing for their homeland. More often than not, they expressed fear and desperation.
Going home
At Maung’s funeral, a community leader stood and prayed: “The sorrow of death has crossed our path. We do not understand, and we do not think it is the right time for him.”
Outside, flashing lights and traffic sounds filtered through the windows, floating in from the busy tourist street of Jalan Alor, where foreign workers serve foreign tourists.
After the funeral, Maung and his personal belongings were sent back to Myanmar. He is finally home.
Read the full story and watch the documentary series on rage.my/RefugeesNoMore.