300 Pinoys expelled weekly amid Malaysia clean-up

MANILA, Philippines - Malaysia’s crackdown on illegal migrants has resulted in the weekly deportation of 150 to 300 Filipinos from Sabah, according to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

Esteban Conejos Jr, DFA undersecretary for migrant workers’ affairs, on Wednesday said the Malaysian government had started sending back Filipinos from Sandakan, in northeastern Sabah, to Zamboanga, a province in Southern Philippines.

"The average per year (used to be) about 10,000 Pinoys brought back from Sabah to Zamboanga. It is continuing," Conejos said.

There are about 200,000 Filipinos in Malaysia – 9,000 of whom are in peninsular Malaysia. Only three to four thousand Filipinos are working in the country as professionals, according to Conejos. In Sabah, most Filipinos work in plantations, construction sites, trade and services, while some migrate to unite with their families.

A large number of Filipino asylum seekers and refugees in Malaysia fled from the conflict-ridden Mindanao region in the southern Philippines to eastern Sabah state on Borneo island.

Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak announced last week that authorities would launch a massive operation to flush out foreigners without travel or identification documents from Sabah, which was part of the Sultanate of Sulu before the Philippines was colonized by Spain.

There are some 130,000 illegal migrants in Sabah, based on estimates by authorities. But politicians in Sabah claim the real figure is several times more than the reported estimate, as foreigners outnumber Malaysians in some provinces.

Conejos said Malaysian deportation centers were set up in Kota Kinabalu, Sawal and Sandakan. There are about 2,800 Filipinos in said areas as of this time, according to the DFA official.

"They go back to Sabah because our ties [there] is so strong. They don’t understand why they need a Philippine passport and a visa to enter Sabah," Conejos said referring to Filipino immigrants to Malaysia.

Conejos said the department was coordinating with Malaysian authorities on the welfare of Filipinos being deported from Sabah.

"Sabah is a complex challenge to both governments. It therefore requires a very comprehensive solution not only looking at it at the labor side but the cultural, ethnicity, family perspective," Conejos said.

International human rights group, Amnesty International (AI), earlier raised apprehensions over Malaysia's crackdown on illegal migrants.

AI said cruel treatment of detainees could result from the crackdown.

The group said that in 2002, it was reported that mass deportations of undocumented migrants caused dehydration and disease that led to the death of children in Sabah's detention centers. - GMANews.TV, with reports from AP

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