Filipino refugees’ kin joined military, inquiry told

KOTA KINABALU: Some descendents of Filipino refugees have signed up to serve in the Malaysian military, a community leader told the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Sabah’s immigrant problem.

Abdul Ainol, a resident of a Filipino refugee settlement in Kinarut, said some of the children there had managed to join the civil service, and a few of them had become teachers.

“But many others are working as labourers, shop assistants and fishermen,” he told Conducting Officer Jamal Ariffin.

Abdul, who is also the Kinarut settlement welfare association chairman, told the inquiry that there were some 7,000 people living at the estimated 700 houses in the 0.4ha settlement. It is located some 10km from the city.

Abdul said his mother had brought him and his siblings from their native Basilan Island in southern Phillipines to Sabah in 1980 for their safety. His father was a Moro National Liberation Front fighter that was battling the Filipino soldiers at the time.

United Nations High Commission for Refugees country director Paul Allen Vernon, who also testified, said many of the Filipino refugees had by now integrated into the local community.

“Their links to their original homes in Mindanao are weak,” he said.

He also said that conditions at the various Filipino refugee settlements in Sabah were “generally acceptable”.