ZAMBOANGA CITY—Filipinos deported from Sabah in Malaysia are bent on returning despite the threat of getting arrested again, jailed, humiliated and caned.
Basit Nur, a Muslim religious preacher (tabligh) from this city who had gone to Sabah to work as a carpenter, said being held for almost three months at the Ruma Mera detention center there was more bearable than seeing his family mired in poverty.
The Philippines has a long-standing claim to Sabah, which lies in the northern part of the island of Borneo. Yet an average of 150 to 200 Filipino men, women and children found to be illegally staying there have been deported every week on a regular basis since 2002, according to reports.
And even as the brutal cycle goes on, the Malaysian government pays yearly rent of P70,000 to the heirs of the sultan of Sulu, who continue to lay sovereign or proprietary claim to Sabah.
Speaking in Filipino and Chavacano, Basit Nur, 40, said earning 45 Malaysian ringgit (P450) a day in Sabah was better than trying to peddle his skills in this city where he often faced discrimination.
“They don’t want to hire me because I am a Muslim, and if they hire me, they pay me only P120 to P150 a day,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).
Asked if he was planning to return to Sabah, Nur said: “I will. Even if I don’t have the money for the processing of my papers here, I will find other ways to return. And I will make sure that I will outsmart the police there.”
He said he did not mind getting arrested again. “Shame can’t be eaten. What’s important is a job to sustain one’s family.”
‘I have to return’
Esmula Arisal, 40, arrived here in Zamboanga City on Saturday after being jailed for three months in Sabah, and said he would not go back to his native Kalinggalang Caluang in Sulu province.
“I will stay here. I will have my working papers processed. I have to return to Sabah,” he said.
A widower, Arisal has established roots in Sabah, where he makes a living selling assorted merchandise. His two children—Hilda, 12, and Midzfar, 2—were born there but are not recognized as Malaysian citizens.
When reminded of the maltreatment he would receive if he got arrested again by Malaysian police, Arisul said: “Why, is the Philippine government offering good jobs to unschooled people like me? Are good wages being offered here?”
But Arisal will leave his children to a relative in Sulu when he returns to Sabah.
“In Sulu, my children can play, go to school. If I get rearrested, they will no longer be with me,” he said.
‘No livelihood here’
In fact, some deportees have already made the trip back.
Sulu-born Maximo Abduraid, also a carpenter in Sabah, managed to return there last week, or three weeks after he was deported to Zamboanga City, according to his nephew, Werning Bilino.
On the phone from Sulu, Bilino said Abduraid had decided against staying in his hometown of Siasi.
“He has no house here,” Bilino said. “Even when I was small, he was already living in Sabah. He’s a carpenter there. Here, he was a fisherman; here, there is no livelihood.”
Eufrosina, who works as a cook in Sabah, said she did not want her children in Palawan province to know that she had been arrested and deported.
“It’s humiliating,” said Eufrosina, who asked that her surname be withheld. “My children know nothing of what has happened to me. They don’t need to know.”
But she stressed that the Filipinos arrested and jailed by Malaysian police—“including children, the elderly, the sick”—were not criminals.
“Our only crime is that we are working there because there is no work to be had here,” she said.
Re-integration program
Officials of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Western Mindanao said contingency measures were being worked out to address the problem.
Elizabeth Dy, the social welfare specialist in charge of the emergency assistance section, spoke of a plan to launch a “re-integration program” that would focus on the “livelihood, employment, health and education” of the deportees and their dependents.
Dy said the DSWD was in the process of ironing out the program mechanisms.
But Eufrosina said she could not afford to wait.
“I can’t wait for them to make the program a reality,” she said. “My children have to be fed, and their schooling should not be stopped.”
Like most of the other deportees, Eufrosina said she had to return to Sabah.
Standing by RP claim
In Malacañang, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the Philippine and Malaysian governments had laid down ground rules for the “orderly” repatriation of Filipinos living or working in Malaysia.
But this does not mean that the Philippines is abandoning its claim to Sabah, he said.
“We have to approach the problems step by step,” Ermita said Wednesday at his regular press conference.
He said the present situation called for cooperation with Malaysian authorities to ensure “humane treatment” for undocumented Filipinos.
Ermita denied that the agreement with Malaysia would jeopardize the claim of the heirs of the sultan of Sulu to Sabah, considering that Congress was in the process of drafting the Philippine baselines.
“Let us address the issue as it is—which is the plight of Filipinos being deported because we have to accept that, indeed, those staying there are ... either undocumented or [holding] spurious documents,” Ermita said.
He said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had formed a task force headed by Foreign Undersecretary Esteban Conejos, “the purpose being to ensure that the manner of arrest, detention and repatriation is not very abusive, and [to discuss] how we can legalize their stay.”
An estimated 200,000 undocumented Filipinos are working in Malaysia, and 2,800 are in detention for illegal stay, Conejos said.
‘Since time immemorial’
The deportees travel by boat for more than 30 hours to return to the Philippines.
Ermita said Filipinos had been in Sabah “since time immemorial.”
“You can’t disregard the Sabah issue, but we can’t connect all these issues all at once. Otherwise, the goodwill that we have with the other country will be lost,” he said.
Ermita said the dialogue between the Department of Foreign Affairs and its Malaysian counterpart was being conducted “under an atmosphere of common understanding of the need to solve an immediate problem.”
A joint statement issued at the end of the two-day meeting of the 5th RP-Malaysia Working Group on Migrant Workers held at the Heritage Hotel in Pasay City said the two parties had agreed on the humane and orderly conduct of the arrest, detention and repatriation of undocumented Filipinos in Sabah.
The Philippine and Malaysian groups were led by Conejos and Dato Raja Azahar bin Raja Abdul Manap, respectively.
Blood ties
“The migration between our peoples is not only for the purpose of work. Sabah is more than that. In addition to this movement of employment, there’s a vibrant trade between Sabah and the Philippines,” Conejos said, adding:
“They even antedate the establishment of the Republic of the Philippines and the Federation of Malaysia. So we always stress to them, what is happening in Sabah is a complex challenge to us …
“We have also very historic and blood ties with Sabah. We told them we are brothers in the area. We must always look at this not from the simplistic prism of movement for workers, but [as] part of the movement going on for centuries.”
During the meeting, the Philippine and Malaysian groups agreed to:
• Cooperate closely so that there would be minimal adverse impact arising from the actions to be undertaken by the Malaysian government.
• Establish procedures for the humane and orderly conduct of the arrest, detention and repatriation of illegal Filipino migrants, and to endeavor to include measures to improve facilities for those processes.
• Step up efforts to regularize eligible migrants.
• Turn over children unaccompanied by parents to the care of appropriate authorities.
• Ensure that only the medically fit will undertake the trip back to the Philippines.
• Facilitate the documentation of deportees. With a report from Cynthia D. Balana - Julie Alipala, Michael Lim Ubac, Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 24, 2008
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment