Walking the talk

We should do as we preach and be kind to others, especially those taking refuge in our country, says the writer. There is nothing to lose.

AT 14, Moaz* already needed to work to contribute to his family’s survival. He helped at a restaurant to earn some money. It wasn’t much but it was something.

One day the authorities raided the restaurant and carted him and many others off to a detention centre. What followed, he said, was nothing short of torture.

“We were crowded into a cell so small that we had to sleep sitting up. We were shouted at every day. There was only a small window that faced another building, so we never saw the sun. It disoriented us so much that we could not tell the time; only prayer times marked the hours for us. For food, we had dry rice and some dried fish twice a day, so we felt hungry all the time.”

If you thought Moaz is describing life in Palestine these days, you could not be more wrong. Moaz and his family are refugees from the Middle East. They came here 13 years ago when war erupted in their home country.

Why did they come to Malaysia? Back home, many years ago, they had befriended a Malaysian family and became very close to them. When the Malaysian family came upon hard times, Moaz’s family helped them, even took them into their home.

After that family returned to Malaysia, they kept in touch and when the war broke out and life became very dangerous for Moaz’s family, their Malaysian friends, grateful for the earlier help, urged them to come here to be safe from the violence.

They were then granted refugee status by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees).

“People think that UNHCR gives their refugee cards to just anybody. That’s not true. Every application goes through a rigorous process and only when they are satisfied that you are a genuine refugee will they give you a card,” he explained.

With bombs falling around their house back home, they had to get away or be killed.

While 149 UN member states have signed the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and/or the 1967 Protocol, Malaysia is one of the 44 nations that hasn’t. It is the only South-east Asian country, besides Indonesia, that hasn’t signed it. What this essentially means is that we don’t subscribe to the UN definition of a refugee, a person who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”.

It’s important to remember that this Convention also covers Palestinians who had to leave their homeland after the 1948 Nakba that created Israel. But, as Moaz emphasised, there are Palestinians in Malaysia’s immigration detention centres.

What’s more, we acceded to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child way back in 1995. Yet this was Moaz’s experience in our immigration detention centres: “I was 14 but there were children there younger than me.” The Convention covers all children, not just our children.

Does it not smack of hypocrisy that we make lots of tough noises (though indeed we should) about the genocide in Palestine, yet behave no better than the Israelis towards refugees at home? When we justifiably shout about the apartheid regime in Israel that cruelly subjects Palestinians to discrimination, we turn a blind eye towards the humiliation we inflict on refugees and, to a slightly lesser extent, on all migrant workers.

Undoubtedly, we have taken in many refugees whether they have arrived by plane, by sea or on foot. Some have paid unscrupulous smugglers to get them to safer countries, sometimes not surviving the journeys (remember Wang Kelian?).

But once they get here, they are treated like less than human. No wonder some of them break out of the literal prisons we put them in.

As Moaz recounted, “When I was finally released after nine days, I thought I would rather die a dignified death being bombed in my home country than be treated as less than human here.”

Are we not ashamed to hear this? Why do we fall for the propaganda that refugees are here to take over our jobs, indeed our entire country? We sound not unlike the rabid followers of Donald Trump.

But how does a human body survive without money to buy food, without the means to go to school or pay to see a doctor? Yet we do not allow refugees to work, their children to go to school or to access any healthcare.

To be sure, ordinary Malaysians have been kind and generous towards refugees. They have raised funds to help many, have set up schools, and have found ways to provide employment that not only generates incomes for refugees but also, most importantly, preserves their dignity.

But all these efforts are made in a legal and policy environment that is hostile.

When the authorities talk about “hunting down” refugees who have “escaped” from detention centres, we are acknowledging that we think of them as criminals, or even animals that should be caged.

What is the point of sympathising, even crying, over the videos that we see of the genocidal violence in Palestine, in Burma and in Africa, when they’re happening far away, and then being cruel to these people when they land on our shores? Nobody truly wants to leave their homes, but such circumstances leave them no choice.

We are so lucky here that we’re not in danger of having our homes destroyed by missiles and having family members killed, and perhaps that is why we cannot imagine what life for a refugee is like.

We can, however, educate ourselves by talking to actual refugees and not just believing everything our authorities say about them.

Moaz, for example, is a very intelligent and articulate young man who is spending his time trying to help other refugees. Others are mothers and fathers who are just exercising the most natural parenting instinct to protect their children.

They heard that Malaysians are kind people. What they didn’t know was that our authorities are not necessarily the same.

Listening to Moaz’s story recently drove home a very important point. There is nothing to lose by being kind to other people.

Helping others is, in itself, a reward but often the kindness will come back to you when you most need it. It’s akin to putting away a bit of money for a rainy day. Why wouldn’t we futureproof ourselves in that way?

*Real name changed for his protection.