KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 25 — Amid growing scrutiny of Malaysia’s treatment of refugees, Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar confirmed in Parliament today that refugee children below the age of 12 are held at the Immigration Department’s detention centres alongside their parents.

However, the deputy home minister said the government’s move to keep the children together with their parents who were detained on suspicion of involvement in criminal activities in the lock-ups was more humane.

“If the children were separated from their mothers, they will be affected by psychological disorders and both parties will be emotionally affected,” Wan Junaidi said in response to Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng during an emergency debate on the issue in the Dewan Rakyat.

While Wan Junaidi acknowledged that the detention of children was against the United Nation’s Convention on Children, but insisted that it should be viewed from the perspective of the parents.

The DAP lawmaker had filed to debate the issue yesterday following a documentary on the alleged mistreatment of refugees here by Qatar-based news broadcaster Al-Jazeera that first aired last week.

Steve Chao, senior presenter for the network’s Asian current affairs programme “101 East”, had carried out a covert investigation, in which he claimed that the refugee communities in the country have paid anything from RM1,700 to RM3,500 for each card, allegedly brokered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) officials in Malaysia.

Chao had gone undercover to visit an immigration detention centre in the national capital, posing as a priest to check on the abysmal conditions that refugees and asylum seekers have to endure.

The correspondent interviewed detainees who complained they had been stripped naked and physically abused; among the allegations was a testimony from a woman who was reportedly taken in just a day after giving birth, purportedly due to a lack of travel documentation.

Chao also claimed that aside from the sale of UNHCR cards, there was also fraud involving some 3,000 asylum seekers who allegedly used false identities to jump the queue and gain early interviews with UNHCR staff to determine refugee status.

The deputy home minister, however, sidestepped the question of soliciting bribes, asserting that the authorities can act only if the affected individual stepped forward to report the matter.

Wan Junaidi dismissed concerns of physical abuse and forced nudity raised by several other lawmakers, saying the authorities “treated the refugees with dignity”.

“When they are sent to the detention centres, they have to undergo physical checks and if they are made to remove all their clothes, it is done in an enclosed space and they are given a towel or sarongs to cover up,” he said.

The debate prompted Sepang PAS MP Hanipa Maidin to propose the Home Ministry take action against the news network for reporting false information.

But in response to the suggestion, Wan Junaidi said, “We don’t even take action on local news networks, what more international organisations like Al-Jazeera?”

In June, Malaysia was downgraded to the lowest ranking in the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TiP) report, indicating that the country had failed to comply with the most basic international requirements to prevent trafficking, treatment of refugees and protect victims within its borders.

Malaysia was relegated to Tier 3, and placed in the same category as authoritarian regimes as such Zimbabwe, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.