Stateless Clan Finally Gets Right to Work

INT'L LABOUR DAY-MALAYSIA:

Stateless Clan Finally Gets Right to Work Baradan Kuppusamy KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 29 (IPS) - Finally after a long and hard struggle for recognition, Jaafar Hussein, a Rohingya refugee from Burma, can afford to smile this International Labour Day, which falls on May 1. ''I have worked illegally, been hunted and lived in fear for over nine years,'' Jaafar, 34, told IPS in his room in a ramshackle hut in Kapar town, a mecca for small scale industries that hires foreign workers about 30 kilometers southwest of the capital. ''A work permit would give us some status...we don't have to run and hide like thieves,'' said Jaafar who makes electronic components in a small backyard factory for a firm in China. ''I might even get married and raise a family,'' he said with a smile. His colleagues, about a dozen of them who crowd the hut, laugh uproariously. The Malaysian government has decided to address a long-festering refugee problem involving the Rohingya to help solve the nation's desperate labor shortage. It announced in Kuala Lumpur recently that it will issue work permits to the 10,000 Rohingya within its borders.

The Rohingyas are Muslims from Burma and have lived here illegally since the late 1980s. They have been subject to periodic arrests, beatings and deportations. Deprived of citizenship after Burma gained independence from Britain in 1948, Rohingyas were persecuted and gradually pushed out of Arakan state, their homeland in Burma. Since then, they have shunted about from one inhospitable Asian state to another for nearly 50 years.

A sizeable Rohingya community lives as refugees in Bangladesh. But the Rohingyas prefer Malaysia because it is Muslim, wealthy and officials are reasonably lenient and easily bribed to close one eye. Their plight is made worse by the fact that many Asian countries, like Malaysia, have refused to sign the 1951 United Nation Convention on Refugees. Officially there are about 10,000 Rohingyas in the country but the refugees themselves estimate their population at 35,000. The discrepancy is another indication of the long years of neglect the Rohingyas have suffered, both here in their adopted country and in Burma, their birthplace.

Unlike his predecessor Mahathir Mohamad whose eyes were firmly on the leap forward to industrialisation, his successor Abdullah Badawi has a heart for the small man that the great wheel of development has neglected. Abdullah's emphasis on agriculture, fisheries and health and welfare is giving the Malaysian poor and the displaced a status. Even Rohingyas, who were periodically arrested and taken to the Thai border and told to walk across and disappear, have come to benefit from the change in policy. Burma refuses to recognise the Rohingyas as its nationals making it difficult to negotiate with the junta to repatriate them. Because they are stateless people, Malaysia also refuses to recognise them as refugees.

Though many Rohingyas hold letters from the Geneva office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugess (UNHCR), recognizing their status as ''persons of concern'', Malaysian police seldom recognise these documents. In a vicious cycle of exploitation, Rohingyas are paid low wages because they have no proper papers and no legal status. As a consequence many Rohingyas work at night and sleep in wayward places during the day to avoid arrest. ''We mostly work in night markets slaughtering and cleaning animals and fish and as garbage collectors,'' said Rahiman, a Rohingya working at the Pudu fish market in the city.

Unlike the men, many of the Rohingya women are treated as 'non-people' without any education and skills. This forces many of them to be street beggars. While the new policy could mark a reversal of fortunes for the Rohingyas, there is still fear that the Malaysian government could retract their pronouncements. Last year the government raised hopes saying Rohingyas would be given refugee status but that policy has been quietly shelved. ''We hope the new policy to give us work permits does not suffer the same fate as the promise to recognise us as refugees,'' said Rahiman. A temporary quirk in the country's migrant worker situation is helping Rohingyas win some status. A move to deport some one million undocumented Indonesian workers and rehire them as legal workers has backfired for a variety of reasons causing a severe labour shortage forcing the government to canvass as far as Pakistan and Nepal for cheap labour. Recognition for the Rohingyas is now seen as way to fill the shortfall.

After several months of discussions with the UNHCR office here, the government announced it would issue temporary stay permits to the Rohingyas allowing them to work legally. They can also get medical care and send their children to Malaysian schools. ''It is time they are absorbed into the labor force,'' Home Minister Azmi Khalid told IPS. ''There are already here and it would be a waste if we don't recognise them or give them job opportunities.'' Human rights lawyers and activists have welcomed the move. The usually critical Malaysian Bar Council gave kudos to the government and urged it to stick to its promises.

''They are in accord with international principles, as well as the Convention on the Rights of Refugees and the Child,'' said Bar Council President Yeo Yang Poh. S Arulchelvam, coordinator with SUARAM, a leading human rights organisation, too, was in agreement with the Malaysian Bar Council. ''It would give Rohingyas a status they had struggled for many years and also better their living conditions,'' he told IPS. ''The government must also ensure the Rohingyas are not exploited by unscrupulous employers. They are entitled to all the legal protection enjoyed by Malaysian workers under the law,'' added the rights activist.

''They also have a right to better housing, schooling and medical care.'' The UNHCR also sees the latest Malaysian government's move as a way to alleviate the vicious cycle of abject poverty that tends to strangulate the Rohingyas. ''It recognises the reality that third country resettlement for Rohingyas are almost zero and that most of them have lived here and settled albeit in terrible circumstances,'' a senior UNHCR official said. ''This is one path to better themselves...we are working with the government to help them.'' (END/2005)
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