A growing number of immigrants from Myanmar are ending up stuck, often for months, in crowded detention centers in Malaysia designed to hold people for only a few weeks.
Almost 2,800 Burmese were detained at camps last month, more than double the 1,200 in January, partly because of a crackdown on human trafficking, a step-up in raids and a slow economy that leaves the migrants without jobs.
People from Myanmar, a desperately poor country with a military junta, are now the biggest group among the 7,000 foreigners at detention centers in Malaysia.
At a center near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, some 120 men sat in neat rows on the floor. Many had their legs drawn to their chests and all were barefoot. There was not enough space and not enough bedding.
“There is no soap for taking a shower, nothing. They don’t give us anything,” said Kyaw Zin Lin, 23, who said he fled to avoid being drafted into the Myanmar army. “Every day we eat the food just to survive ... They treat us like animals.”
“It’s very difficult to stay here,” said Aung Kuh The, a pale 26-year-old. “We have got a lot of problems. Some people, you know, we want to see the doctor but we don’t have the chance.”
HUMAN TRAFFICKING
One reason for the rise in detainees is a crackdown on trafficking. A report published in April by the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations cited the accounts of Burmese who said immigration officers turned them over to traffickers.
That practice has all but stopped, Myanmar community leaders in Malaysia say.
Now, though, the Burmese are trapped in detention. The Myanmar embassy often takes six months to register them for deportation and charges them 620 ringgit (US$180) — much more than neighboring Indonesia.
By contrast, detainees from other countries are typically deported within a week.
Calls to the Myanmar embassy were repeatedly put on hold and then unanswered.
About half the Burmese — those fleeing persecution — may qualify for UN refugee status, but that process takes up to four months. The others are economic migrants. Some 140,000 Burmese work in Malaysia, but foreign workers who are laid off lose the right to stay.
Some have spent more than six months in crowded, dirty detention centers. One man, whose brother was in detention for four months, said he would rather be sold to traffickers from whom he could buy his freedom.
“I prefer to be trafficked,” said the man, who would only be identified by his nickname, Ryan, to protect his relatives in Myanmar. “I don’t mind paying 2,000 ringgit.”
OVERCROWDED
Five of Malaysia’s 13 detention centers are overcrowded; four of the five have large Burmese populations.
Journalists accompanied the human rights group Amnesty International on a rare visit recently to three detention centers just south of Kuala Lumpur, the country’s biggest city.
At the Lenggeng Detention Depot, 1,400 people were crammed into dormitories meant for 1,200. Of them, about 300 were from Myanmar.
Hundreds of men jostled each other for room in the bare dormitories. One was sleeping on a stone ledge in a bathroom. Each dormitory was fenced by wire mesh and barbed wire, giving detainees just a few meters of space for walking.
“The detention centers we saw fell short of international standards in many respects, as the immigration authorities themselves acknowledge,” said Michael Bochenek of Amnesty International. “It’s [in] a facility of such size that infectious diseases are communicated readily.”
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