Manila - Malaysia has agreed to ensure humane treatment of deportees amid its massive drive to flush out illegal migrants from Sabah state, officials said Tuesday (22 July).
Malaysia will step up efforts to regularize the status of eligible Filipino immigrants, while children of illegal immigrants will be turned over to the care of appropriate authorities instead of being arrested, said a joint statement issued by the Philippines-Malaysia Working Group on Migrant Workers at the end of two days of biannual talks.
Only medically fit deportees would be forced to travel, the statement added.
"The meeting also agreed to redouble efforts for instituting long-term solutions to the problems of cross-border travel, work and migration," it said.
These include a proposed bilateral border pass agreement and possible deployment of Malaysian immigration attaches at a processing center in the southern Philippines city of Zamboanga, the statement added.
Both sides agreed that the government has "established procedures for the humane and orderly conduct of the arrest, detention and repatriation of illegal migrants." The statement also said they would try to include measures to improve facilities for these processes.
The joint working group was created in 2005 after complaints of alleged abuses suffered by Filipino deportees during Malaysia`s 2003 crackdown on illegal migrants sparked the Philippines to file two diplomatic protests, one over the alleged rape of a detained 12-year Filipino girl by Malaysian police.
There are at least 200,000 undocumented Filipino workers in Malaysia, said Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Esteban Conejos.
Malaysian authorities estimate some 130,000 illegals are in eastern Sabah state on Borneo. The state`s politicians insist the real figure is several times higher and that foreigners outnumber Malaysians in some provinces.
Last month, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak announced a massive drive to deport foreigners without travel or identification documents from Sabah, which borders both the Philippines and Indonesia.
Since then thousands of Filipino migrants have been deported. Some have complained that male deportees were sometimes caned.
Amnesty International Malaysia has urged Kuala Lumpur to revise its plan amid concerns it may lead to human rights violations.
The immigrants include a large number of refugees who fled the conflict-ridden Mindanao region in the southern Philippines and stateless people and migrants who have lived in Sabah for more than a decade, Amnesty said.
In 2002, Amnesty said reports indicated that mass deportations of undocumented migrants led to deaths of children due to dehydration and disease in Sabah`s detention centers. (By TERESA CEROJANO/ AP)
Source: www.mysinchew.com (23 Juli 2008)