KUCHING, Dec 15 — Human rights activist Peter John Jaban today urged Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin not to insist that the stateless in rural Sarawak provide documents to back their applications for Malaysian citizenship.
He said the applications will be doomed to failure as many of the stateless in rural areas do not have any form of documentation.
“I am concerned because the minister is talking about documentation. This is the root of the problem,” he said when responding to the minister’s winding-up speech in Parliament yesterday.
Jaban, who leads a group of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that help the stateless to apply for birth certificates, identity cards, and Malaysian citizenship certificates, said many stateless in Sarawak do not have any form of documentation that the minister was referring to.
“They were born in rural villages where registration was unknown or uncommon.
“All these years later, as a result of inaction by the state National Registration Department (NRD) on this issue, they are simply too late to correct this problem.
“Even worse, the stateless have not been able to register their children. So, the problem goes on,” he said.
Jaban said the minister must come up with innovative solutions for the problems faced by the stateless in Sarawak.
“Any new drive that insists on a small range of evidence is simply doomed to failure. The minister must come up with innovative solutions to this issue,” he added.
He cited as an example the case of former border scout Basar Arun and his colleagues who defended the country during the confrontation with Indonesia in the 1960s but have yet to be accorded the status of Malaysian citizens, despite numerous application attempts.
He also gave a second example involving a woman who came from a broken home and was looked after by the state Welfare Department since she was young.
“Despite having a government clinic card to prove that she was born in Sarawak, she was denied the citizenship, even though the application was made by the Welfare Department, all because her mother had failed to register her birth.
“Now, her daughter is also stateless. Why is this piece of documentation — a clinic card all she has to offer — not sufficient?” Jaban asked.
He also offered a third example of the daughter of a former border scout from Balai Ringgin in the Simunjan district, who was allowed to deposit a substantial amount of money from her pepper farming into Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) on the strength of her green identity card.
“Then, NRD withdrew this type of identity card and now the bank is refusing to allow her to withdraw her own funds. Clearly, her green identity was good enough for the bank to allow her to take her money out,” he said.
Jaban said he hoped that the new initiatives to be announced by the home minister will make some headway in solving the stateless’ problems in Sarawak.
He cautioned that without a proper understanding of the issues in Sarawak, this latest drive will end in yet another failure.
He urged the minister to learn lessons from the previously failed task force on the registration of the stateless and to make sure the NRD has fully understood the root of the problem.
In his winding-up speech in Parliament yesterday, Hamzah said he agreed that citizenship issues in Malaysia have been going on for a long time.
He said he would give the stateless one year for all of them to apply for citizenship with relevant documents to prove that they are genuinely citizens.
