PUTRAJAYA must implement better policies when it comes to refugees and asylum seekers after 528 Rohingya inmates broke out of a temporary detention centre in Kedah yesterday, said Subang MP Wong Chen.
He said that the authorities must ensure that the recaptured refugees were not mistreated and met with retributive punishments, and urged SUHAKAM and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to be given immediate access to the refugees along with the full right to inspect the Sungai Bakap detention depot.
“A proper accounting and recording of the causes of the incident has to take place. We have to ask the following fundamental questions: were the refugees in Sungai Bakap given adequate shelter, food, health services and for the children, access to education?” Wong said in a statement today.
“This reporting must also make recommendations on how to improve and the Government must then implement these improvements immediately.”
Wong also said that the breakout should be viewed not as a one-off human tragedy but as a serious policy wake-up call for the Government to be more transparent and do much more to help refugees seeking asylum in the country.
To this end he urged the Parliamentary Special Select Committee on Fundamental Liberties and Constitutional Rights to summon Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin to testify and provide answers to some fundamental refugee policy issues.
“The minister has to answer as to why since August 2019 the Government has stopped the UNHCR from having full access to refugees seeking asylum in Malaysia,” he remarked.
“The minister has to disclose to Parliament how much we are spending on managing refugees and be fiscally accountable on all related expenditure items.
“The minister also has to revamp, develop and then implement better policies and administrative provisions to process applications for asylum.”
Wong went on to opine that the breakout did not appear to be a planned incident with any external help as the refugees – including young children – were reported to be merely walking barefooted without any food or water and without any clear final destination.
“To me, it appears that all they wanted to do was to get as far away from the Sungai Bakap detention centre as they possibly could. This was clearly an act of extreme desperation,” he pointed out.
“So, the onus should be on the government to be transparent and accountable on what was really going on in the Sungai Bakap depot, including all other temporary immigration detention depots too.”
Early yesterday morning, 528 Rohingya inmates fled the temporary immigration depot at Bandar Baharu, Kedah. There were 664 inmates at the centre at the time.
A total of 357 inmates were rounded up by police. Six who were killed when they were crossing a highway. – April 21, 2022
