My rough plans in search of the tribes in Cameron Highlands started off with my friends telling me how dangerous Cameron Highlands is today. “You better be careful, the military and police are doing a big operation to arrest all the illegal workers there, and there are many landslides happening now.”
So I checked the local news before heading up just to be sure what I’m getting myself into, not really worried about what I find there but more on transportation. I usually don’t refer to our local news to get any real information about my projects.
So here is what I found, I Googled, ‘illegal cameron highlands’.
“Major crackdown on illegal immigrants!” I made plans to go anyway. After getting a bus ticket which was rather easy, I met with some local contacts in Cameron Highlands. Those who have been living here for more than 10 years now, and people who knew where I could find the tribes too.
It took me a few days to do some research and finding my way into the right places into Cameron Highlands. I didn’t notice any danger or difficulty being here, it was calm and beautiful.
On 2nd December, I took a ride with my contacts to places where the ‘illegal immigrants’ were staying or considered hiding out from the authorities since this ‘major crackdown’ is happening. We ended up in an old shop lot and an abandon site around the Tanah Rata area where I met with 20-30 families from Myanmar.
“How long have you been hiding here?”
“About 3 days now. We ran into the jungles when the military came, then we found shelter here with a local.” one of the boys replied.
“And how long have you been living here in Cameron’s as illegals?”
“They are not illegals, they are refugees.. that’s the proper term for this families.” my local contact advised.
That makes one wonder. Refugees? So why aren’t they protected by the UNHCR? Why is the media only writing about ‘illegal immigrants?”
“It took me 18 weeks to get here, walking and in a car from Chin State, Myanmar to the Malaysian borders. I had to pay an agent US$1500 and half of the journey there were 15 of us in a car. The agent has to pay the borders to get us through. I’m not sure how much.”
“Why did you leave Myanmar?”
“We want a better life, we are poor and the military discriminates us there.”
“But now you are also discriminated here.”
“Yes, it’s a difficult life for us, but what can we do, I will leave Malaysia now and find another place to live for my family to be happy, I have a new born so I want to protect her.”
The proper term for them is “Refugees’ as they had left their countries due to human rights issues, armed conflict or serious discrimination. And since most of the families have the UNHCR and the MSO identity cards they are known as refugees not illegal immigrants. So why doesn’t our authorities or government recognized this? Why didn’t the UN get involve to protect them here?
The truth is the Malaysian authorities doesn’t recognize the “refugees’ status by UN, so they are put into the category as illegal immigrants. Harassed by the police, detained for months with no proper food or water and abused. Not treated like human beings.
In Malaysia, refugees have no legal protection because the country has not signed the UN Convention recognising refugees. This means they can be arrested at any time and taken to one of the country’s detention centres. Kuala Lumpur has one of the world’s largest urban populations of refugees and asylum seekers, with about 150,000. – Aljazeera.
According to one of them who spoke english, they have been living and working the farms here for more than 5 years now, the land owners would give them a place they can stay, which is home. They earn an averagely good living and some even help the land owners in the restaurants and schools, teaching children. They like Cameron Highlands as it reminded them of back home.
“When the military came in the night time, they destroyed all our homes, threw away all our belongings and broke my TV too. We were lucky that we could run into the jungles. They then put many of my friends into police trucks, some were even beaten if resisted. Most of us have this MSO and UN card but it’s not recognized.
When one of my friends showed this UN card to the police, they threw it away or cut it into two. Then they still arrested him. We are all considered ‘illegal’. So we have to hide till this is over or when we can leave this place. Most of them who were arrested were taken to the near by police station to be processed or deported.”
“We have contacted our local Myanmar societies to send a message out to UNHCR but we are still waiting. So far nothing is happening and we have no place to go. No one has come to help us here.” – one of the Myanmar refugee explains.
“My baby is sick today, but I can’t go out from here to see a doctor or get medication. I’m afraid of getting caught and my husband needs to be here with us. I can’t have my family separated.”
Does this child look like an ‘illegal immigrant’ to you? If you are a mother you will see that she is the same as you are. Just protecting her child and family. Would you want to be treated the same? Where do we draw a line to protect children and mothers equally? What is a process for our authorities to treat refugees as human beings first and do a proper organized searches, rather than a straight forward unplanned ambush and treating all this families and children as ‘illegals’.
It’s a sad truth today in Malaysia that a refugee is not protected with equal human rights. We see them as a treat, when we ourselves are too ignorant to find out the truth, to get to know them or do their jobs. They work our farms, they build our homes and hotels that we stay in, they follow instructions giving by the ‘bosses’ in farms, clearing out lands and when there is an issue in landslides and crimes, we blame the foreign workers. Would you work in a local restaurant? Would you farm there? Would you clean the toilets and the streets in this areas?
How about the agents who bring them in illegally into the country? How about the land owners who have illegally cleared up the lands and getting ‘approvals’ from the authorities to start new constructions around the Cameron Highland hill areas, even when it can be dangerous, causing landslides or which are destroying the nature and polluting the rivers?
I can’t say how that is dealt with or which ‘professionals’ they use to evaluate the harm to the environment with but with what I saw myself, the bald naked hills and brown rivers are not a pleasant sight today.
The hills are getting cleared for new developments, orang asli (tribe) villages are getting relocated, forest are being illegally cut down to a bare, rivers are being polluted and the back streets are a dumpsite. Foreign tourist come in and out not even noticing this as they think this is how it has always been. Is this Malaysia today?
“How long have you been living here as a refugee?”
“Now for about 1 year.”
“Where were you before this?”
“I was in India, I did religious studies there for about 7 years.”
“Also as a refugee?”
“Yes.”
“So what do you do here now?”
“I work in a farm, but now I hide here as the police are arresting all illegal immigrants here.”
“You are known as an illegal here?”
“Yeah, Malaysia doesn’t recognize my refugee status from UNHCR, so I have to hide, I’m afraid to be caught.”
“So, can you tell me how you got here?”
“Haha, I walked.”
“What? you walked from Myanmar?”
“Yes, I walked for about one month and the rest of the trip they put me in a car with 14 others.”
“Wow, what happen to your house here when the military came?”
“They tore down everything, my home, my things, the fridge and tv, I lost everything, they smashed everything. A friend of mine was caught, but when he showed them his UN card, they threw it away and still arrested him as an illegal.”
(Myanmar Refugee, Cameron Highlands, Pahang – Malaysia)
Below are some of the images of human beings and families living in Malaysia. They are from Myanmar, some farmers, some mothers, some sisters and some teachers. They are Refugees here, or in Malaysia known as Illegal Immigrants.
We later visited a community learning center which is run by a local church for the Burmese children. The teachers here teach them English and Math (a few other subjects too), they are from Myanmar. The centre also acts as a shelter and home to some refugee children while their parents work in the farms.
They had about 20-30 families here before but today most of them have fled and were left with only one family. Today there were no classes.
The centre has not receive any support from the local government, even some locals did not support the idea of giving education to this refugee children. The church decided to run it with donations received by some friends and the Myanmar families who pay a small fee for food.
Even with the UNHCR protection letter for the Burmese children and families here, they are not safe from the Malaysian authorities today.
“Can you show me where Myanmar and Costa Rica is?”
The two brothers started searching on the map, which was in the Burmese version purchased from Kuala Lumpur.
The farmers and locals are complaining that the tourism industry is effected by this, and the vegetable farms are closed, construction work is on hold, workers have fled to protect their families. Many families with children and babies are still in the jungles. Some shops are closed as their workers have run away hiding in the jungles after hearing all this stories of military and police arresting workers. Some areas in Cameron Highlands looked abandon and quiet.
Some locals who have been living here for generations see the change today, there is more commercial and housing constructions happening, the rivers are turning brown and the roads are all polluted, the back lanes of Cameron Highlands are covered with rubbish for years as nothing has been done by authorities. Should we blame the ‘illegal immigrants’ for this too?”
It’s a life cycle we create ourselves. I saw some young protesters going out to the streets with banners and paper cards, but was just a hand full of them. Where are the rest of the Malaysian Youth? A local there told me they send out 500 flyers for a peaceful demonstration to protect the environment and tourism here in Cameron Highlands, but only 10-15 showed up.
I’m guessing many are sitting behind their computers just reading about what’s happening on Facebook, swallowing what the media shoves down their throats but not taking part, not trying at all to make a different to protect your own land and rights. Sounds very usual here in Malaysia.
I wondering now, what would the reaction of the youth be in Europe or USA if something like this happens? We have to stop the blaming, stop the discrimination and do something about it ourselves, forget about the money and leave the politics alone. If each one of us makes an initiative to protect all lands, teach all children and share our knowledge with all humans equally, we will be human beings again.
