Amnesty the way forward to end statelessness in Malaysia

Dear Joe,

One ought to remain focussed on only those who were born in Malaysia and made stateless for political reasons. This was not envisaged by the Reid Commission.  My sister’s ward about whom I wrote earlier is a classic example of a person who was denied education, health services, the right to seek employment and the life chances normal citizens have.

The State failed her.

The Politicians failed her.

Society failed her and she should not have to wait another 5 years to receive justice.

She cannot waste away another five years for the BN government to give her the dignity and rights she is entitled to as a human being.

This is the reason we assisted Waythamoorthy to file the claim in the UK court for people like this young lady.

She needs to be compensated for the injustice inflicted upon her under the universal principal of natural justice for having deprived her basic human rights by the BN government in defiance of the Reid Commission’s recommendations. Alternatively, as a stateless person, as deemed by the UMNO-dominated BN government, she like others in similar situation like her is entitled to be referred to the UNCHR under its Special Humanitarian programme entitled to international identification papers that are issued those found to be stateless.

In any case the Deputy Minister Waythamoorthy should grant a reasonably good quantum of monetary compensation, a few million ringgit per person,  for each one those born in Malaysia, but was denied their human rights in similar vein to the claim he has lodged in the UK courts for a few trillion dollars as compensation for individuals like this lady.

The good Deputy Minister is in error when he says there is no conflict of interest for him to hold concurrently two positions as Chairman of HINDRAF as well as being a Deputy Minister in the BN government. These positions are  adversarial to each other, HINDRAF as a community based NGO advocating for the rights of the displaced ex estate workers while at the same time being a Deputy Minister promulgating regulatory programmes with statutory power impinging on the community.

His denial that there is no conflict of interest (Sunday Times , 27 May) in holding on to these two conflicting position is a flawed reasoning and can never be tenable in a free society. It may work in some authoritarian society but not in Malaysia.

Paul Low of TI in accepting the appointment as a Minister saw this conflict and promptly resigned from TI.

The Indian community members too would resist such a dual role.

HINDRAF is NOT a political party like MIC or MCA, but an NGO that advocates for its rights from the State of which Waythamoorthy is the DEPUTY MINISTER. The dual role, conflicting with each other, could lead to social control by stealth by the State, and erode the rights of the community.

As for Anwar, we have to give him the benefit of doubt. It is well known that human beings develop a stronger inherent value each time the individual faces crisis, which leads the mind to a state of catharsis based on the experience. I honestly think Anwar has altered his previously entrenched UMNO centric values for the betterment of the Malaysian society

Regards

Robert K Chelliah

From:
paramanvs@yahoo.com.sg

Yes I agree with you on this.

Many have not understood the reason why Hindraf has stated the process of getting the poor Indians their legitimate documents eg MyKads, Birth Certificates etc is a process that will go on for 5 years.

This does not mean that an application is going to take 5 years to process.

In fact a family in Penang I believe was the first successful family under Hindraf to obtain all their IDs. A blue MyKad with 8 Birth certs given to the whole family within 2 weeks of the recent GE.

If it was stated within 100 days or so what will happen to those who walk in after 100 days?

The 5 years was asked for so that Hindraf could go out into all estates etc and look for any Indians who are stateless.

Anwar had mischievously said all those pending applications will be resolved within 100 days. Then he said 300k. But the fact remains that till date his Election Manifesto does not include the issue of statelessness that Surendran has been claiming to fight for.

I asked Nurul myself personally in our HINDRAF-PR meetings, how is PR going to solve the statelessness issue within 100 days knowing the hurdles that need to be overcome especially the racist BTN bureaucracy.

She had no answer.

Then we told her our Blueprint spells out the solution and it states 5 years to do so. This was one of the reasons we never trusted PR's intentions in solving the critical Indian problems.

On Feb 15, malaysiakini reported that Anwar will implement the Hindraf Blueprint in 100 days http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/221444.

He went on to state that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) will include 5 key issues in the PR Election Manifesto which it had “missed out”.

1)    Resolving the ‘long standing issue of stateless people’ in Malaysia, without excluding Indians, in the first 100 days of Pakatan’s administration.

2)    Technical training and job opportunities for school leavers, stressing the major beneficiaries to be the Indian community.

3)    Ensuring all Tamil schools will be fully funded and infrastructure comparable to the national educational standards.

4)    A government National Housing Board to build affordable homes that includes focus on helping build freehold homes for ex estate workers around the country.

5)    The setting up of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC).

But till date if you were to check the PR Election manifesto website which was last updated April 15 2013 but also includes news articles dated May 26 2013, it does not have any of the 5 issues that Anwar claimed it would include. http://www.pakatanrakyat.my/files/ENG-Manifesto-BOOK.pdf

This clearly proved that Anwar lied.

Paraman Subramaniam

Note to Dr Paraman: Nurul, I was told, agrees with the Hindraf Makkal Sakthi Blueprint but could not say so openly.

https://www.facebook.com/sibur.p/posts/10200782644943433?comment_id=5798199&offset=0&total_comments=5

Joe Fernandez

When Anwar Ibrahim was DPM, he may have been part of the problem -- he obviously kept quiet -- rather than being part of the solution. Now that he's in the Opposition, he's self-servingly singing a different tune for reasons of political expediency. We have to give him the benefit of the doubt instead of clobbering him on the head for his unsavoury past.

Stateless should not apply to those who came by the backdoor into Sabah since there's no record of them leaving their country. Those who came by the backdoor should leave by the backdoor and return legally if they have a job in Sabah. It's more complicated if they have children in Sabah.

This is a problem deliberately created by Putrajaya to steal the country from the Orang Asal through foreigners on the electoral rolls who are being used to marginalize and disenfranchise them (Orang Asal).

We should call a spade, a spade.

That's the only way to solve the problem.

It's no point pussyfooting around the issue or indulging in outright lies, disinformation, rhetoric and polemics like Mahathir who should in fact be hanged for High Treason.

Ironically, both Mahathir (Malayalee) and Anwar (Tamil) are of Indian origin.

There may be those who entered Sabah legally and are now stateless after having overstayed ten years or more. The problems of these people have to be resolved in negotiations between Malaysia, Sabah and their home countries. Perhaps we can take only some of them and that too as permanent residents only for a start, not as citizens. We have to await the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry.

Star should pursue these matters with Deputy Minister Senator-designate P. Waythamoorthy of the Prime Minister's Department.

The media can play a role. Unfortunately, it's run by incompetent nincompoops.

Gayu Guru Gerai Nyamai. Salamat Ari Gawai. Selamat Hari Gawai. Happy Gawai. Kotobian Tadau Do Kaamatan. Selamat Pesta Kaamatan. Happy Kaamatan Festival.

Sent by DiGi from my BlackBerry® Smartphone

Patau Rubis

Joe, everyone can make promises which maybe more difficult to implement. Why didn't Anwar did it when he was DPM, I wonder?

As for stateless people, they should be helped, I strongly agree but an all out amnesty anyone can promise as PR did, but what happen if there are administrative and legal problems as encountered as In Sabah when a "new population" is mobilized to become a political force which takes away the right from the indigenous people? Is Sabah taken over by UMNO using Project IC from PBS led Government, as accused by local politicians, a healthy precedence for Malaysia in the long term?

A simple solution may not be the answer to people who left their mother land for Malaysia for every reasons known. My view is that we should leave the problem for the relevant Department in the Civil Service in the Administration and the Judiciary to deal with these cases. My own daughter was made "stateless" by certain inept people in the Administration but after we took the Government to the Court they reinstated her citizenship. So I understood very well the problems faced by "stateless people but they go back to the Law for due process, long and tedious and cost money but this is where politicians can help by making sure inept civil servants to do their jobs properly not making citizenship easy as in the PTI in Sabah nor relieved people of their Citizenship so easily as in my daughter case.

Thank you for your concern which by the way is also our STAR concern, a pun maybe, but STAR will treat citizenship as a life and death issue. No credible democratic nation will make any human "stateless" nor agree to any easy short cut to Maykads. This should be our joint concern and our stand to save Malaysia from future anarchy.

Happy Gawai to all

 
Robert,

To solve the stateless problem, it would be necessary for the Government to declare an Amnesty.

Alternatively, the Director General of the National Registration Department can exercise his prerogative and discretionary powers to solve the problem of the stateless on a case by case basis. That would take forever.

I dealt with the DG in Putrajaya once by letter not so long ago and obtained MyKads for two of my Orang Asal students who had procedural defects in their application. The DG instructed his Kota Kinabalu office two weeks later to phone the father of the students concerned and issue them the MyKads. The MyKads were issued within a month.

In another case, I dealt with the DG of the Insolvency Dept in Putrajaya and secured a discharge for someone who had been bankrupt for 14 years.

In another case, I even wrote to then Finance Minister Tunku Razaleigh Hamzah from Kuching, cc to Bank Negara, after the United Asian Bank in Kuala Lumpur failed to send me a set of new cheque books even two months after having requested them. Needless to say, Bank Negara took prompt action and I received not one but two sets of cheque books.

Back in KL the bank tried to be funny with me when I applied for a small overdraft for my cash flow needs. They even had the cheek to suggest that I could complain to Razaleigh again since they had no intention of approving my application. They referred to my earlier complaint about the cheque books.

I wrote the story for the New Sunday Times. There are no prizes for guessing that I quickly secured the overdraft facilities which had been denied.

Generally, I find the Government machinery efficient especially as it moves towards a paperless administration. The civil servants I encountered took pride in their work. Perhaps it's because I expect efficiency. Serving in the Government, albeit briefly for two years, also gave me an inkling of how the civil service functions.

In Sarawak, the civil service was super efficient even way back in the 1980s when we had no computers. I have many issues with the Sarawak Government but I wouldn't rate inefficiency among them.

Pakatan Rakyat (PR) pledged to solve the stateless problem within 100 days of taking office.

This could only be done by declaring an Amnesty which would recognize the stateless as citizens by operation of law.

I believe Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim would have been able to make good his pledge. There's no reason for him to make an empty promise.

The issue with the stateless is that they either don't have birth certificates, and if they do, their parents probably don't have their documents in order.

In the estates, as in the rural areas, people are not particular about getting personal documents especially if they are not going to venture out from their traditional surroundings. This is why the Penan as well in the jungles of Sarawak are stateless. Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud once advised the Penan to apply for permanent residence as a first step. Can you imagine anything more humiliating than this? But that's bureaucracy at work.

The Penan would need an Amnesty as well.

It's not possible to declare Amnesty just for the Indians among the stateless in Malaya.

There should be only one Amnesty on the stateless and to cover the whole of Malaysia. This would take care of not only the Indians in Malaya but also the Penan in Sarawak, the Bajau Laut in Sabah and others elsewhere in the country.

Waytha told the media in recent days that he has a mechanism to solve the problem of statelessness among the Indians in Malaya.

I can't imagine any mechanism other than what I have outlined above.

Waytha should work with the Law Minister, Nancy Shukri, and the Attorney General on the Amnesty once the Prime Minister gives his consent.

Joe Fernandez

Sir

Tunku Abdul Aziz Ibrahim,

Your good wishes for the discriminated Indians are most welcome.  https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2013/05/26/tunku-aziz-waytha-the-perfect-choice/

Pray tell me how long it would take, as an administrative procedure, to restore the citizenship to the 380,000 or so stateless Malaysian born Indians. Certainly it would not take 5 years as intimated by the good Deputy Minister. It should take no longer than 6 months or less for the identification, documentation and issuance of their National Registration Identification Cards (NRIC) and the monetary compensation payable to each one of them, akin to the claim lodged in the UK High Court by Mr. Waythamoorthy, now a Honourable Deputy Minister of the Malaysian Government for the suffering inflicted by this unjust institutionalised and legislated discrimination.

Secondly, Sir, pray tell me what would be the quantum of compensation payable to each one of them, in terms of actual cash and resettlement benefits,  as compensation by the UMNO dominated BN government for having denied them their basic life skills such as education, their civil liberties, their dignity, their life opportunities under the universal principle of natural justice, as an ideal promoted by HINDRAF, that every other Malaysians are entitled to. These stateless Indians were subjected to slave-like conditions for their survival in their own country of birth. They were dehumanised, denied of their human dignity and the right to all that any human being is entitled to in a civilised country. Would any one deny  them the a fair compensation that would be at least can be quantified at a minimum of 5 million Ringgit to each one of them, similar to the claim lodged in the UK High Court by the Honourable Deputy Minister Waythamoorthy, on behalf of these Malaysian born people of Indian ethnicity.

We wait to see how soon these stateless individuals would be given a lifeline and paid a proper compensation either by the Malaysian government or the claims submitted by the Deputy Minister at the UK court. Your support to their course, as an eminent person, would be most welcome by these stateless souls.

Robert K Chelliah