A rising e-sports player has won a years-long battle for Malaysian citizenship, a victory that allows him to compete internationally and highlights problems faced by hundreds of thousands of stateless children in the country.
Muhammad Aiman Hafizi Ahmad was part of a team competing in the popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), which pits participants against each other in a virtual fight to the death.
However, when they won the chance to take part in two tournaments in China last year, the 20-year-old had to skip them — he could not travel overseas, as he was officially stateless.
Photo: AFP
Aiman was born in Malaysia to an Indonesian mother and an unknown father, and adopted by local parents, but he had never been recognized as a Malaysian citizen and could not get a passport.
He had applied to become Malaysian years earlier and was refused, but after being forced to miss the tournaments, he renewed his efforts by launching a widely publicized legal battle. Authorities then decided to grant him citizenship, making the court fight unnecessary.
“I have waited to get this certificate of citizenship for eight years,” Aiman said, delightedly clutching the document on Tuesday in the administrative capital Putrajaya.
With the legal battle behind him, Aiman said that he looked forward to “resuming playing in the competitive scene.”
Aiman was adopted by a couple from Malaysia’s ethnic Malay Muslim majority in the town of Taiping, in the central state of Perak.
Although his birth was later registered by his adoptive parents, his documents described him as stateless. As well as leaving him without a passport, this made it more difficult to get access to healthcare, education and work, and he could not even open a bank account.
Unlike some countries, Malaysia — which is home to millions of migrant workers from poorer parts of Asia — does not automatically grant citizenship to people born there.
At least 290,000 stateless children live in Malaysia, many with parents from Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar, according to media reports citing officials.
Malaysia’s constitution says that the government can choose to register anyone under the age of 21 as a citizen, but Aiman’s lawyer, New Sin Yew, said that the process is “quite opaque and takes a very long time.”
“The fastest [application] can take about three years and the government often rejects applications without reasons,” he said. “I think if this case was not brought to the attention by the media, it would have been much more difficult.”
Aiman’s parents first tried to register him as a citizen when he was 12, but the application was refused.
He got into gaming by playing on his phone and discovered PUBG.
Aiman then started playing in PUBG competitions and joined a team, and hones his skills by practicing four to five hours a day.
He is hopeful for a bright future in e-sports.
“I want to make my family proud and my country, too,” he said. “That is my dream.”
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS