4,000 deportees risk caning, return to Sabah

This was the startling discovery of Malaysia ’s immigration authority after more han 4,000 undocumented immigrants who were deported in the past returned to Sabah between 2004 and 2008 at the risk of being caned.

Datuk Baharon Talib, director of the Sabah Immigration Department, recently told online news site The Star that some 4,326 illegal immigrants went back to work in the Malaysian state’s plantations, timber mills, and restaurants right after they were expelled from the territory, which is being claimed by the Philippines.

"Some have been deported up to seven times and we have found them back here based on our statistics," Baharon said in the interview.

The report said various sectors in Malaysia had been asking the government to impose caning as punishment on local employers hiring undocumented workers.

These employers are now only being punished through fines and charges for not paying levies, according to Baharon.

Caning is Malaysia ’s second highest form of corporal punishment next only to death sentence. Its laws mandate that a convicted person endure beating of up to 24 strokes.

The crackdown on illegal migrants in Malaysia has started in 2002, with the searches extending from construction sites in Kuala Lumpur to Sabah 's oil palm plantations.

The mass deportation is part of the Malaysian Bureau of Immigration’s plan to rid the nation of about 2,000 Filipinos who had been imprisoned for illegally working in Malaysia .

Last March, the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights urged the Malaysian government to end caning as a form of punishment against illegal immigrants because it is prohibited under international human rights law.

According to the group, about five million illegal foreign workers from countries like Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines, and Nepal may be subjected to cane whipping.

Malaysia's Bar Council, which represents 12,000 lawyers, echoed the group’s concern and called for a ban on caning against illegal immigrants.

Philippine party-list Representative Luzviminda Ilagan earlier condemned the harsh treatment of Filipino deportees and said that "Malaysia has the reputation as among the world’s top ten worst places for refugees to stay."

A recently published study by the non-government US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), says Malaysia ranks among the top five violators of human rights of refugees.

Merrill Smith, USCRI director of international planning and analysis, was quoted in reports as saying that Malaysia forcibly sent refugees from Myanmar to Thailand , where "some of them were sold into slavery -- men to fishing boats and women to brothels."

Aside from Malaysia, the USCRI in 2007 named China, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Iraq, Kenya, Russia, Sudan, and Europe as the 10 worst places for refugees. - Mark Joseph Ubalde, GMANews.TV

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