Migrants from the Philippines and Indonesia who have flooded into Malaysian Borneo are being targeted with a massive deportation program, as the government comes under pressure to act.
The settlers have been blamed for waves of crime and creating a generation of stateless children who live in appalling conditions in the towns and villages of Sabah state.
The influx of mostly Muslim migrants has also tipped the ethnic balance against indigenous tribes who used to dominate the population, say politicians in Sabah, which is struggling to cope with the influx.
PHOTO: AFP
After a poor result in March elections that made it more sensitive to voter gripes, the national government has announced a mass crackdown to send the illegal migrants back to their home countries.
“The people there do not recognize the borders. They move in and out due to economic opportunities in Sabah,” Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said recently, promising that a “large scale” operation would begin this month.
Sandwiched by the Philippines in the north, and Indonesia’s Kalimantan to the south, resource-rich Sabah has for decades been a magnet for immigrant workers who labor on construction sites and oil palm plantations.
“This problem has a very long history and many observations have been made on illegal immigrants. The people here know this crisis goes back to the ’70s,” said Cabinet minister Bernard Dompok, who hails from the region.
Dompok, leader of the UPKO party which is part of the Barisan Nasional coalition that has ruled Malaysia for half a century, said Sabahans have becoming increasingly concerned about the number of foreigners.
“I think the focus of those involved in illegal immigration during that time was to ensure there was a change in the demography of Sabah’s population,” he said. “But of course today, in the whole of Sabah, no matter what race or origin or religion, the people are now worried over this perennial problem.”
Sabah’s Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Pairin recently described the problem as “threatening the peace and security in the state” and likened it to a time bomb which could explode if not defused.
Official data say a quarter of the state’s 3 million inhabitants are “foreigners,” but the number of illegals is not known. Pairin said it could be as high as 1.5 million while civil society groups estimate 1 million.
Najib has said that at least 100,000 to 150,000 people will be deported in the first phase of an ongoing program that will continue until the state is clear of illegal migrants.
In the markets and on the street corners of Sabah’s capital, Kota Kinabalu, migrant children beg for money or try to sell plastic bags to earn a few coins.
Some as young as nine years old can be seen sniffing glue — aid workers say it is a common pastime here — and at night, those who have no homes to go to shelter in cardboard boxes discarded at the market.
“The main problem is they do not have identification and without this, they cannot go to school, so many end up as child labour,” said Aegil Fernandez from rights group Tenaganita.
It conducted a survey that found there are nearly 80,000 stateless children in Sabah, the majority of them of Filipino descent.
The migrant influx to Sabah dates back to the 1970s when tens of thousands of Muslim Filipinos fled conflict in the country’s south and sought refuge here, claiming ties with the Muslim Bajau tribe.
One of the most notorious Filipino settlements is Gaya Island, where some 4,000 illegal settlers live in villages on its fringes.
In one village, Kampung Pondo, young children frolic in the warm waters of the South China Sea using fish containers as rafts, calling out for money from a visitor.
Below shacks made of plywood and scavenged construction material, women washed their clothes in the filthy sea water, some with babies strapped to their backs with sarongs.
Outside the village, which reeked of garbage and raw sewage, antipathy towards the settlers is clear, even among Sabah’s Muslim inhabitants.
“There are drug lords here who smuggle syabu [amphetamines] and sell it in the city using their children. Most of them are armed so the locals stay away from these waters,” said Kanchi Abdullah, village head of Gaya Island’s Bajau tribe.
“They tap into our electricity and water supply. Their children are quick to learn the local language and mix — soon, it will be hard to tell them apart from a Sabahan,” he said.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
BIGGER ROLE: Beijing has said it maintains an impartial stance on the war in Ukraine, but by training Russian troops, China is far more involved than previously known China’s armed forces secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China late last year, and some have since returned to fight in Ukraine, according to three European intelligence agencies and documents seen by Reuters. While China and Russia have held a number of joint military exercises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has repeatedly said that it is neutral in the conflict and presents itself as a peace mediator. The covert training sessions, which predominantly focused on the use of drones, were outlined in a dual-language Russian-Chinese agreement signed by senior Russian and Chinese officers in Beijing on
RSS