I think both the Sun and the Star headlined today with an article on concerning migrants.
I am rather suspicious of the lip service the government often pays to this issue, which might explain why after years of abuse, these things still go on.
Well done to YB Gobind Singh and colleagues who have been consistently calling attention to these issues. Some highlights:
The report, compiled during a two-week visit by the UN working group, also covered the situation of undocumented migrants.
The working group said it recorded complaints that some detainees had been beaten up with weapons or tools or were punched, kicked or had dirty water thrown on them.
Some were held in small rooms without access to food, and were not informed of their right to consult a lawyer or to contact their family, it said.
As Malaysia has yet to ratify the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, refugees and asylum-seekers are also among those detained, convicted and jailed.
Amnesty International (AI) had, on June 17, said that Malaysia is a “dangerous” place for refugees who are often abused, arrested and “treated like criminals”.
There are nearly 90,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in the country, but AI estimates that the number of unregistered refugees lies at more than twice the official figure.
Gobind also leapt to the defense of young Danial, who was allegedly hit by a van driven by an auxilliary policeman who fled the scene. The policeman has not been arrested.
In other news of abuse, seven more Penan rape survivors come forward.
I doubt there’s anything I could write to lend any more weight to their stories :( -
J’s story
According to the PSG report, J is a 23-year-old Penan. As the only daughter in her family, sometimes she would be left alone at home while other family members went out hunting. According to J, many loggers would often visit her village, and sometimes they would be drunk and “create chaos”.
J was raped when she was 14 by a logger. The logger, in his 30s, had proposed marriage but she had refused him. One night he returned to J’s house and raped her. J did not tell her family about the rape because she was afraid the logger might kill her family.
He persisted in his proposals even after the alleged rape, telling her that “you have already slept with me, it’s better for you if you marry me.” Eventually she gave in to his demands for her to marry him, as she was worried for her family’s safety.
J says the logger abused her physically and psychologically. If she refused him sex, he would beat her, sometimes with a stick. When she fell pregnant in 2003, he sent her back to her village and then he disappeared.
J did not want to return to the camp to look for him because, she said, “I don’t know how to get there and I don’t want to see him again.” She is looking after her child, now seven. She feels the logger has ruined her life and does not want to re-marry, because she does not trust men.
She wants to focus her energy on her child. She hopes the child will go to school and then help protect the Penan community from exploitation by outsiders.
C’s story
C, now 24, was tricked into marrying a logger when she was 17. The logger told her he was single, and persuaded her to allow her village headman to conduct a ceremonial, unregistered, marriage.
The logger’s fellow workers later told C he was already married and had four children. He denied this, but disappeared later when C was three months pregnant.
C remains angry with the man because he cheated her. She married a Penan man in 2007, and has a two-year-old daughter with him. Her husband treats her well, though she remains worried about money to educate her children.
C says camp workers often come to her village in groups of three or four, looking to “main perempuan” (harass girls).
Under Section 375 (c) of the Criminal Procedure Code, procuring a sexual relationship under the pretense of promising to marry a person, when in fact the perpetrator is already married, falls under “misconception of fact” – a criminal offence of rape, even if consent is obtained.
A’s story
A was abducted, together with her sister, after two logging employees broke into their house in 2001. The sisters were forced into a vehicle and taken to a logging camp.
A was separated from her sister in the camp. She was beaten and raped almost daily for a week. Someone in authority at the camp discovered her plight and sent her back to her village. She was pregnant by then.
Currently, A’s elder sister has been caring for A’s child, since A gave birth. A is ill and cannot work. She has not seen the logger since escaping from the camp and has remained single. She considered making a police report but could not, because she simply did not know how, and did not have the money to travel to the police station.
The headman and villagers went to the camp following A’s escape home, but were unable to find A’s sister, or the loggers who had abducted them.
A’s sister, who had been taken to the logging camp together with her, is still missing. A is uncertain, but thinks her missing sister might still be in the camp.
E’s story
E was abducted on a motorcycle and raped by two men in a logging camp in 1996. Following her abduction and rape, her fellow villagers found her in the camp.
They took the two loggers to the village and locked them in a house there, but the foreman and a group of loggers came and broke the lock and freed the two captives.
Most of the villagers were angry, but they felt they could do nothing because the logging company was “too powerful” and the police would always take their side.
The other three cases all involved loggers – Iban, Chinese or Indonesian, from outside the survivors’ area.
The other survivors also recounted common features of violence, abduction, cheating, exploitation or abandonment once the Penan woman became pregnant.
