The state of the stateless in Malaysia

Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of United Nations , Article 15 states that everyone has the right to a nationality and no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Malaysia being a member of the UN should be strictly adhering to this noble declaration however in reality Malaysia has an alarmingly growing in number of stateless people that have been denied their citizenship which is their legitimate birth right as a human being.

Unfortunately in Malaysia, the ruling elite within the UMNO dominant government have been systematically using 'citizenship' as one of their ways of means to continue their autocratic rule over this country.

It has always been a 'numbers' game. There have been allegations that it appears to be a hidden tacit UMNO government policy to reduce the number of non Muslim voters and at the same time increase Muslim voters in critical areas that UMNO's dominance is seen to be weak. In Sabah particularly, several Kadazan, Dusun, Murut (KDM) leaders have alleged that 'project M' was implemented to ensure Filipino Muslims and Pakistanis were granted citizenship's in large numbers to dilute the KDM majority of Sabah. Dr Chong Eng Leong in his book 'Lest We Forget' estimates that around 600k citizenship's were issued in 1986 to Filipino and Indonesian Muslims. In west Malaysia , Indonesians are seen to enjoy the privilege of obtaining citizenship with relative ease as compared to many other races who still hold red Identity Cards even though being born in Malaysia before independence.

The new 'soft Muslim vote bank' who forever will be dependent on UMNO, provides the ruling elite within the BN government a perfect counterbalance against not only the non Muslims but also against the growing number of Muslims who have become more politically enlightened of the gross abuses and corruption that has become so widespread under the BN.

Another methodology employed by UMNO is the act of omission and commission to deny citizenship's to the softest target within the Malaysian community, the Malaysian Indians, some of whom are into their 6th generation born on this land. .

The Human Rights Party of Malaysia (HRP) estimates that there are currently 450k Indians in Malaysia that do not possess Malaysian citizenship. Though this number appears to raise some eyebrows in disbelief amongst some, the following facts may prove that this indeed could be shockingly true.

In 1976 the MIC formed a bureau to register Indians in this country who had issues concerning citizenship. Within a mere 5 years or so there were more than 40k Indians who registered themselves as being stateless.The numbers were staggering and MIC did nothing more than just getting them registered as applicants. Alarm bells rang and eventually in 1981 MIC was ordered to close down that bureau and along with it the more than 40k Indian stateless applicants were swept under the carpet. From whom the orders came from to close down that bureau is anyones guess but coincidentally it was about the time that Dr Mahathir came into power. In 1981 the numbers at the very least stood at more than 40k stateless Indians, today that figure definitely would have risen significantly. Malaysia's population stood at 13.43 million in 1981 , today the population is around 29 million. Just on that account only one could estimate today that there may be more than 100k stateless Indians, however it must be noted that MIC conducted the registrations during those years in an extremely quiet manner and as such there may have been many thousands more who would not have known about it back then to have come forward to register.

On January 21 2008, the then Selangor Chief Minister Khir Toyo had advised the Home Ministry to set up a body to look into the plight to handle 40k Indian children in the state of Selangor who did not have birth certificates. Subsequently no one ever heard anything about it ever again. If there were 40k stateless Indian children just in Selangor, what about their parents and grandparents as well as elder siblings that are above 18 years of age ? This could possibly mean, just in the state of Selangor there may be more than 100k stateless Indians today.

On 13/08/2010, HRP met with the top Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN) brass in Putrajaya. They informed the officers that the HRP currently estimates the stateless Indians to number 450k nationwide. HRP's detailed investigative conclusion that this huge problem is due to multifactorial reasons mainly:
1) Tacit UMNO government policy of ignoring this problem,

2) Lack of political will to resolve these issues both from BN as well as PR elected representatives,

3) Application processes too complicated for the illiterate and semi literate Indian poor,

4) Racial religious bias,

5) Insensitive and hostile over the counters JPN staff,

6) Sheer ignorance of these officers of the magnitude of the problem.

So it is not as if the UMNO government is totally ignorant of the gravity of the problem as well as the causes of it.

On 23/01/2011, the Deputy Secretary General of Registration and Immigration Datuk Raja Azhar Raja Abdul Manap was quoted to have said "We do not know how many of these people are without the documents ." (Source Staronline)

On 19/02/2011, the Special Implementation Task Force (SITF) on the Indian community in collaboration with the Home Ministry of the government established a campaign to register, process and eventually provide fast tract birth certificates and MyKads to stateless Indians. That was the officially stated purpose but given what has transpired since, it looks like it is just another 'wayang kulit'. The campaign was run for only 8 days in 9 states through the 61 JPN branches. Even though in reality the MyDaftar team only registered each application and gave them a reference number but the propaganda that went about nationwide through the mainstream medias gave it an impression that citizenship's and birth certificates were resolved for as many numbers as they shouted about who turned up in response. Interestingly within a mere 52 hours of work, there were in total 14,882 applicants. This would roughly translate to 5 applications were made to register every 1 minute or rather one stateless Indian registering every 12 seconds. It was also stated that another 10k forms were taken for their friends or relatives but had not returned the forms. The MyDaftar team which is under the Special Implementation Task Force (SITF) with Dato Seri Najib as the chairman of cabinet committee, then chose to extend the campaign another mere 5 days even though the numbers that had come up to register were so high. The extension of 5 days however was in a very quiet manner , without much media fanfare probably fearing it may attract further larger numbers to turn up.

19/02/2011, PPP WP chairman Datuk A. Chandrakumaran reported that 8 days were not sufficient and his party received 'never ending visits' of stateless Indians. (Source Sinarharian)

20/02/2011, Johor MIC state chairman Datuk K.S Balakrishnan said that there are more than 5k Indians in Johor that still do not have proper identification documents.(Source Star)

As all methodologies used in national population statistics data in this country are not transparent and is a closely guarded state secret, protected under various draconian 'secret acts' by the government, one only can use the various data available and read in between the lines to look for the correct information that reflects the true gross critical ground reality that we see.

To look for bees one has to trace the trail where the honey is.

Considering that stateless people are deprived of the ultimate social security net which is citizenship and are hence trapped as they are excluded in virtually every sector ie health, education, employment, security and housing, it should come as no surprise that Indians have the lowest development index in the country.

They have the lowest life expectancy rate , 67.3 years compared to the national average of 71.2. Indians have the 2nd highest infant mortality rate, highest school drop out rates ie less than 5% of Indians reach tertiary level of education. They have highest incidence of alcoholism, highest incidence of drug addiction as well as highest number of prisoners in proportion to the population. Indians are involved in 45% of the country's crime and they record the highest percentage of deaths whilst under police custody > 95%. Indians constitute the highest rate of suicides of any Malaysian community 21.1 suicides per 100,000 population as compared to Malays 2.6 suicides per 100,000 population and Chinese 8.6 suicides per 100,000 population. More than 60% of the inmates at the Simpang Renggam Detention Centre are Indians. Around 40% of male Indian youth are in the grips of crime. 14% of juvenile delinquents in this country consists of Indians. 41% of the beggars in Malaysia are Indians and more than 30% of Indians do not own a home. Only a minuscle 1.5% of the nations corporate wealth of the country are in the hands of Indians and if Tan Sri Ananthakrishnan and Datuk Tony Fernandez wealth is taken out of this, it may even be less than half of that value.

Beneath all these depressing statistic is probably where lies hidden the estimated 450k stateless Indians in this country.

The stateless in this country are generally trapped in poverty. They feel marginalized and ostracised in virtually every sector in this country : hospitals, schools,institutions,enforcement agencies, government and corporate. To survive they need to seek a defence mechanism to overcome their woes and challenges. They either have to beg or to turn to crime as there is no other alternative in a government that is devoid of caring and sharing.

Mr Uthayakumar of HRP estimates that the majority of the 450k stateless Indians in this country lie within the states of Kedah,Penang,Perak,Selangor,KL, Negeri Sembilan and Johor. Coincidentally these states also represent the highest distribution of thug gangs that mainly consists of Indians.

HRP came out with several proposals to JPN to address the statelessness problem among the Indians :

1) The government should set up a special transparent unit within JPN. This unit should be adequately resourced all the way from field workers to department director. Their charter will be to :-

a) Identify all Indian Malaysians who do not have birth certificate, MyKads or have problems with their citizenship status.

b) Create a database of them and establish appropriate programs to clear them one by one by 31/12/2011.

c) Simplify the procedure for applying for delayed birth certificates and MyKads. Make the process 'poor friendly'. Do not require the applicants to fill out so many forms and to provide so much of documentary evidence which most often are redundant.
Do not require them to come to the JPN offices so many times and sending them most often on a wild goose chase. Do not reject their applications because they did not cross the 't's or dot the 'i's. Treat them with more respect and support them throughout the process.

d) Authorize senior and respected members of the community to certify births and parentage where a hospital is unable to do it.

2) Religion, race and marriage should not be made non constitutional barriers to birth registration.

3) Parents must be empowered to decide the religion of their children on the basis of equality of all religions.

4) The JPN or other religious organizations should not impose the Syariah law on non Muslims. Mixed marriages are one of the major reasons for the stateless Indian problem.

5) Empower this special unit to address this problem without interferance from any religious bodies.

6) The JPN should discard procedures that were set up a long time ago using outdated technology like photographs to establish resemblances with newer mehods like DNA profiling where necessary.

7) All that is required is for the hospital where the child is born to be made responsible for the registration of the births. The birth is registered and a birth certificate should be issued.

8) In the case of births at home or for abandoned children, a similar simple enough alternative procedure needs to be established.

9) The government should extend the e-Govt system to cover this crucial need and set up a mechanism to monitor and report on this effort in the JPN website.

10) This special unit in the JPN must be authorized to work with the Health Ministry, the Education Ministry, the Human Resource Ministry etc to resolve any associated problems pertaining to those ministeries.

So why should one care for these stateless people ?

First and foremost there shouldn't be a reason. Just based on empathy and on compassionate grounds, each one of us must take on this responsibility to put pressure on all our political leaders to make serious efforts on solving this ever growing number of stateless people in this country. Politicians that just give mere lip service and ignore this issue need to be exposed and censured.

Secondly as we notice crime is on an ascending trend in this country and it could in some way be simbiotically linked to the rise in the number of stateless people in Malaysia. It will be pointless to build higher fortified walls around our house and put up expensive elaborate security systems as well as live in gated, guarded homes but continue to choose to remain blind to the fundamental root causes of this problem. If left not addressed, Mother Nature has her own unique way of 'correcting' these imbalances.
The problem of exclusion is one universally acknowledged to be the source of all various social ills of any given society. The statelessness of the Indian poor, reduces Indian participation in Malaysian democracy and the shortsighted and self serving view of UMNO has far reaching consequences. If you were to connect the dots, you will see that the thinking that generates this shortsighted position on statelessness is what is perenially keeping us in a state of mediocrity among the community of nations. Those of you who have been fortunate enough to step out of the country and see what is happening around the world will recoqnize the true folly of this kind of myopic policy of the Malaysian elite.

Due to our selfish self centred lifestyles we could get 'bitten' in the process for not exercising our civic duty in helping these poor and vulnerable stateless people.

Albert Einstein once said that the world is a dangerous place not because of people who do evil but because good people who just look on and do nothing about it.

We are run by diversity. We become divided because we think that we are many . This feeling of diversity , the psychology of plurality, the sentiments of multiplicity lead to conflict, confusion, and chaos; whereas the feeling of unity and harmony, the sentiment of synthesis and the experience of oneness is unity.

Let us all be united in bringing the state of the stateless in Malaysia to its valid and justified attention.