Day: March 6, 2024

Junta authorities in southwestern Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region are compiling lists of draft-eligible residents amid a roll-out of the country’s conscription law, sources told RFA Burmese.

On Feb. 10, the junta enacted the People’s Military Service Law, prompting many civilians of fighting age to flee Myanmar’s cities, saying they would rather leave the country or join anti-junta forces in remote border areas than serve in the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup d’etat.

The junta has sought to downplay the announcement, claiming that conscription won’t go into effect until April, but RFA has received several reports indicating that forced recruitment is already under way across the country.

Residents of Ayeyarwady region’s Ingapu, Kyon Pyaw, Yae Kyi and A Thote townships said that junta authorities called a meeting of ward and village administrators in the third week of February and ordered them to gather lists of residents eligible for military service.

A resident of Kyhon Pyaw’s Inn Ma village, who like others interviewed for this report spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, told RFA that authorities checked residency lists in the village and compiled a list of 35 people, both men and women, for conscription.

“There are 10 wards here and the heads of 10 households in each ward collected the lists, and handed them over to the respective ward administrators,” he said. “They didn’t need to collect the lists door to door, as they can find the information from the family lists. The disabled and ill were exempted from military services.”

Recruiting one from each village

In Ingapu, the junta’s township administration ordered ward and village administrations to recruit one person from each village-tract for military service, residents told RFA.

A resident of Ingapu’s Thet Kei Tan village said that the village administrator gave superiors the name of one young man in nearby Chin Kone village, who he said “seemed willing to join the military.”

“On the other side of our village, each household had to pay 10,000 kyats (US$5) if they did not want to serve,” he said.

In nearby Bogale township, junta authorities organized military training for teachers in front of the town hall around mid-February, residents said. On Feb. 20, leaflets were distributed in area markets persuading people to join the military.

Township authorities called a meeting with respective ward administrators and instructed them to “focus on youths who have no parents and few relatives” for recruitment, a resident told RFA.

“It wasn’t mandatory to recruit one person from each household,” he said. “Authorities recommended at the meeting that the recruitment focus on youths with no parents and those who are willing to join the military to earn a salary.”

In another Ayeyarwady township called Myan Aung, a resident told RFA that the recruitment process began around Feb. 15 in the wards and villages. 

He also said that the junta conducted military training for 30 people at the headquarters of Infantry Battalion 51 in the seat of Myan Aung township on Feb. 27. Residents of the township were made to pay for the cost of two sets of military uniforms and the daily wages of the trainees, he said.

A member of the Ayeyarwady parliament, who declined to be named, told RFA that the junta leadership has focused on his region to recruit soldiers as it is their “stronghold.”

“However, I don’t think they will get the numbers they had hoped for,” he said. 

Another Ayeyarwady lawmaker condemned the junta’s use of forced recruitment to implement the conscription law.

“Although they use the term ‘military service,’ people are actually being forced to work as porters or act as human shields on the battlefield,” he said. “It’s a grave violation of human rights.”

Hundreds held in Mandalay

RFA also received reports on Wednesday that hundreds of youths aged 20-30 who had been recruited for military training from around the country are being stationed in Mandalay region’s Yamethin township.

“Around 200 or 300 youths are being held at the No. 1 Police Training Depot for military training,” said a resident of the township. “They have to live in dormitories there and no one is allowed to leave.”

Another resident of Yamethin told RFA that, beginning on March 1, security had been strengthened at the facility.

“It’s not the regular training period for new police officers,” he said. “Authorities are inspecting all passers-by.”

The junta’s Information Ministry said in a social media post on Feb. 27 that there had been some “misinformation” circulating about the collection of personal data of men aged between 18 and 35. It also dismissed reports that junta security forces and administrative organizations are forcibly arresting people for military service.

Similarly, pro-junta newspapers said Wednesday that reports of youths being held for military training at the No. 1 Police Training Depot in Yamethin are false.

On Feb. 15, pro-junta media quoted spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun as saying that around 50,000 people will be drafted into military service each year in accordance with the country’s conscription law. He added that 13 million people are currently eligible for service in Myanmar, based on a 2019 census. 

Missing for more than a month

Reports of the forced recruitment in Ayeyarwady came as a resident of the region told RFA that four people arrested by junta authorities in Dedaye township for alleged possession of weapons remain missing one month after their detention.

Hlaing Myo Kyaw, Naing Myo Shwe and his wife Su Mar, and Htet Myat Soe from Dedaye’s Kyeik Taw and Ka Wet Chaung villages were arrested on Feb. 4 with drones and weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. 

Two others from the township – former political prisoner Wai Yan Oo and his mother – were also detained at the time.

Two weeks later, on Feb. 16, authorities shot Naing Myo Shwe dead after forcing him to lead them to a site in Kyeik Taw village where more weapons were found.

A person close to the families of those arrested told RFA that Naing Myo Shwe’s wife, Su Mar, was subsequently released, but the whereabouts of the other four remain unknown.

“They have been unable to contact Htet Myat Soe, Hlaing Myo Kyaw, Wai Yan Oo and his mother,” he said. It’s unclear where they are being held.”

Attempts by RFA to contact Khin Maung Kyi, the junta’s spokesperson and minister of social affairs for Ayeyarwady region, for comment on reports of forced recruitment and the case of the four missing residents of Dedaye township went unanswered.

According to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, junta authorities have killed 4,646 civilians and arrested 26,222 others since the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup d’etat. 

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Many Tibetans are excluded from serving in senior Chinese government positions, a new report by a Tibetan advocacy and rights group says.

In Tibet, Tibetan representation in leadership positions are limited to “token positions” at the national, provincial and sub-provincial levels, with the majority of positions held by Han Chinese, according to the report by Washington-based rights group International Campaign for Tibet, or ICT.

And the current 205-member Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the party’s top policymaking body, has only one Tibetan member – Yan Jinhai, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, or TAR – according to the report titled “Underrepresented: Tibetans kept out of most leadership positions.” 

That’s one fewer Tibetan than there was in the previous Central Committee, which had two full members, said the report issued on Monday.

The report comes amid criticism about China’s repressive policies in the region, where Tibetans face discrimination and restrictions on their rights to freedom of religion, association and peaceful assembly, as well as assaults on their language and culture.

Three other Tibetans serve as alternate members in the Central Committee.

At the national level, no Tibetan has ever found a place on the Politburo or the Standing Committee, the party’s highest authority, according to the report.

Accountability

The report was released as Chinese leaders hold the “Two Sessions,” the most important annual meetings of its parliament, the National People’s Congress, and its political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. 

The timing of the release was meant “to draw attention to the issue of underrepresentation of Tibetans in top leadership positions and to hold Chinese authorities accountable for addressing systemic barriers to meaningful Tibetan participation in leadership roles,” Bhuchung Tsering, head of the group’s Research and Monitoring Unit told Radio Free Asia.

“For China to uphold its claim that Tibet is an integral part of the People’s Republic of China, it is essential for the government to address these discrepancies and provide clarity onthe reasons behind the limited representation of Tibetans in leadership positions,” Tsering said. 

In the current 14th National People’s Congress, Lobsang Gyaltsen, who currently heads the TAR People’s Congress, is the lone Tibetan among the 14 vice chairs, while Jamyang Shepa, who is from Labrang Tashikyil Monastery in Kanlho of Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province, is the only Tibetan in the 159-member NPC Standing Committee, the report said.

Similarly, at the highest advisory body in China, the 14th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, or CPPCC, Phakpalha Gelek Namgyal is the only Tibetan to find a place at the vice president level and was reappointed as one of the 23 vice chairs of the CPPCC in March 2023, according to the report.

“One reason for this crisis of Tibetan leadership at the national level is the Chinese leadership’s lack of trust and confidence in the Tibetan people, even those who hold comparatively senior positions,” ICT said. 

“Any Tibetan leader who expresses views concerning legitimate grievances of the Tibetan people becomes liable for persecution after being accused directly or indirectly of ‘local nationalism.’” 

Provincial roles

Across the TAR and in Tibetan-populated areas of Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan, and Gansu provinces, there are no Tibetans holding party secretary titles, the highest position of power at the provincial level, the report said. 

However, out of the 17 prefectural level and two county level administrations, only three Tibetans – in Lhasa and Shigatse in the TAR and in Tsojang (Haibei in Chinese) in Qinghai – hold the position of party secretary. This number is lower than in 2020 when four Tibetans held the position, and Party Secretary of Tsolho (Hainan in Chinese) was also a Tibetan.

“The fact that the Communist Party excludes Tibetans from real leadership positions in Tibet gives reason to believe that the party leadership does not trust Tibetans to support CCP rule if they had the choice and, to the contrary, that Tibetans would choose to abolish CCP rule, if they could,” ICT’s Tsering said.

Security entities 

Non-Tibetans also hold almost all major leadership positions in Chinese government security entities – the People’s Liberation Army, the  People’s Armed Police and Public Security Bureau – in Tibetan areas at both the provincial and prefectural levels. 

The Public Security Bureau, which has been at the forefront of Chinese suppression, control and surveillance of the Tibetan people, also has no Tibetan representation at the provincial levels. 

At the prefectural level too, only four out of 17 PSB heads are Tibetans, ICT said, adding that this suggests the Chinese Communist Party “does not trust Tibetans enough to be leading these offices.”

“China’s securitization imperatives in Tibet – which has ‘stability maintenance’ as a paramount objective – mean no Tibetans in security-related leadership,” the report said.

Additional reporting by Tashi Wangchuk and Sonam Lhamo Singeri for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Helmet-wearing police officers in Cambodia’s northern Preah Vihear province used tear gas and fired their guns in the air to disperse about 130 people who tried to stop the destruction of homes on Wednesday amid a land dispute with a large land concession company.

More than 100 officers from provincial police, the military and other security forces traveled to several villages in Kuleaen district to evict residents and burn down homes that Seila Damex Co. Ltd. has said are located on concession land, according to Nai Thuon, a representative for the villagers,

Video footage showed a line of angry residents yelling at officers and concession workers standing near several tractors along a dirt road. Photos showed the charred remains of at least one home.

Officers wielded shields, fired their guns into the air and sprayed tear gas, Nai Thuon said. Some 20 villagers were arrested and taken to an undisclosed location, she said.

Phnom Penh-based Seila Damex has government-approved plans to develop the area into a rubber plantation. The land dispute affects some 300 families. 

“The villagers are facing hardship,” Nai Thuon said. “I have asked the government to allot some land [from the development] for the villagers.” 

‘I was relying on the law’

Authorities warned the villagers last month that they would destroy their homes if they didn’t leave to make way for Seila Damex. Radio Free Asia was unable to reach Preah Vihear provincial police Chief Suos Sok for comment on Wednesday. 

“It is very unjust for us. I have nothing to rely on,” said Nhim Sreyneang, another representative for villagers. “I was relying on the law, but we were turned away by those who we are supposed to depend on.” 

She added that Seila Damex company has filed for bankruptcy and hasn’t planted crops on land they control for several months – and yet the government is still sending security forces to the area to assist the company.

The seizure of land for development – often without due process or fair compensation for displaced residents – has been a major cause of protest in Cambodia and other authoritarian Asian countries, including China and Myanmar.

Cambodia’s land issues date from the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime, which forced large-scale evacuations and relocations, followed by a period of mass confusion over land rights and the formation of squatter communities when the refugees returned in the 1990s after a decade of civil war.

Wednesday’s clash in Kuleaen district is the first violent crackdown of 2024 over a land dispute, Am Sam Ath of human rights group Licadho said. He urged authorities to resolve the dispute peacefully and  to avoid violence or imprison people.

“We can’t avoid disputes but we need to avoid violence and resort to peaceful means,” he said.

The National Power Party, an opposition party that was formed late last year, also urged authorities to facilitate a solution, saying in a statement that the land dispute should be settled “peacefully by considering people’s benefit as a priority to promote their livelihoods and harmony.” 

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a new bill that would allow for a ban on TikTok if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not divest from the social media app.

Led by Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, the lawmakers said the bill would allow the U.S. president to ban foreign-owned social media apps deemed national security threats.

But the owners of those apps would be given a grace period to sell the apps to American owners to avoid the ban, they said.

“This bill is not a ban, and it’s really not about TikTok. This bill is a choice,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois and his party’s top member on the committee, at a press conference.

“It’s a choice for ByteDance, as well as any other social media app controlled by a foreign adversary,” he said. “ByteDance has repeatedly used the TikTok platform in ways that undermine not just American national security, but the interests of its users.”

The bill, which will be formally introduced to the House of Representatives on Thursday, is similar to one introduced by the Senate Intelligence Committee last year that was backed by the Biden administration. The White House called the new bill “welcome.”

Foreign media control

Both Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi told reporters that it is not possible for ByteDance, as it claims, to operate independently of China’s government and to keep user data secure from authorities.

Krishnamoorthi noted that TikTok editor-in-chief Zhang Fuping, for instance, is also the general-secretary of the company’s Communist Party of China cell, which acts as the official liaison with Beijing.

“In China,” Gallagher added, “there is no such thing as a private company. The ruling authority, the Chinese Communist Party, and its leader Xi Jinping, have their hands deep in the inner workings of the company with devastating consequences for our personal freedoms.”

He said that meant America’s most popular social media app was a propaganda threat, likening the situation to a hypothetical one in which Soviet officials ran the New York Times, Washington Post and network TV stations ABC and NBC at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s.

“TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is legally required to support the work of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “And under ByteDance’s ownership structure, the Chinese government has the ability to manipulate TikTok’s algorithm surveillance.”

ByteDance has strenuously denied claims it takes orders from Beijing, with its CEO last year telling Congress that the company was prepared to undergo auditing of its servers to prove user data was secure.

Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday he believed the bill was the latest attempt to “deliberately overstretch the concept of national security to wear down Chinese enterprises.”

He denied Beijing influenced TikTok’s American operations.

“The company concerned is a private enterprise that conducts business in the U.S. in accordance with market principles and international rules and complies with U.S. laws,” Liu said in an email, appealing for “fair, just and non-discriminatory treatment.”

Biotech ban

The TikTok bill was not the only bill before Congress on Wednesday that could ban Chinese companies from a U.S. presence.

A Senate committee separately approved 11-to-1 a bill that would ban U.S. federal agencies from working with Chinese biotech firms accused of surreptitiously collecting Americans’ genetic information. 

That bill passed with bipartisan support in minutes, with only Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, voting against it, after explaining he was concerned anti-China sentiment was clouding good policy.

There was an American company that “also does business in China that really loves this bill because it bans their competition,” Paul said, adding that he had “no love lost for some of these companies” as one of the most vocal critics of China’s collection of genetic data. 

“You know, over the last year or two, I’ve been quite concerned with what’s been going on in China with DNA synthesis with the possibility that the [COVID-19] virus came from the lab in Wuhan,” Paul said.

“I do worry, though, that as our anger builds with China, that this idea of disengaging really has an overlay of provincial interests,” he added, cautioning that some bills were verging on “protectionism.”

The most prominent of the firms targeted by the bill, WuXi Apptec, last month denied collecting genetic data and rejected the claim it poses a national security threat due to its own ties to China’s government.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This week’s confrontation between Chinese and Philippine ships in the hotly disputed South China Sea signifies a “dangerous” and unprecedented escalation of Beijing’s harassment in the waterway, Filipino officials indicated on Wednesday.

The incident around Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal marked the first time that injuries were reported in any of the tense incidents at sea that have become more frequent lately, as Chinese ships try to block Philippine ships and boats from delivering supplies to Manila’s military outpost there.    

Four crew members aboard a military-contracted Philippine ship sustained minor injuries when a  water cannon blast from China Coast Guard ships shattered the windshield on the bridge during the incident on March 5, Filipino officials said.

Vice Adm. Alberto Carlos, chief of the Philippine military’s Western Command, was aboard the Unaiza May 4, the civilian ship that was targeted by the water cannons, and said he witnessed the scene up close. 

“It’s very unusual. One hour (they were) circling us. I told myself it’s an indication they are really serious in monitoring us,” Carlos told BenarNews. 

He said the Chinese presence had surged hours before dawn broke on Tuesday. 

“When they water cannoned us, we were very slow. …We were not fast enough to run away from the water cannons,” he said. “They hit the windshield, but the crews were prepared for possible flooding in the engine room.”

Carlos said he dropped for cover when the water cannon hit the target – the impact shattering the windshield was caught on video. Tuesday’s incident marked the first time that Manila said people had been injured in these incidents. 

The Unaiza May 4 was on a mission to bring provisions and remove some Filipino troops aboard the BRP Sierra Madre. Manila grounded the World War II-era navy ship on Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal to serve as its outpost there. 

But the supply ship was forced to abandon its mission after two China Coast Guard ships blocked its path and fired water cannons at it, breaking windows, nearly flooding its interior and injuring some crew members. 

Carlos said the Unaiza May 4 is larger than previous contracted-ships.

“We check whether we can use it in future resupply missions. It was an exciting trip. We tried. The mission to find out whether it can dock close to Sierra Madre failed,” the naval officer said. “We will do it again. We have to test if this can enter the shoal.”

Protest

The Philippines formally filed a diplomatic protest over Tuesday’s incident, making it the 10th protest lodged against China in 2024, and the 142nd since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. came to power in 2022. 

The incident fueled calls for the Marcos administration to invoke the Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States. The treaty calls on both nations to come to each other’s military aid in times of external aggression. 

On Wednesday, Marcos sought to calm public fears and said that while he viewed Tuesday’s incident as alarming, there was no need to invoke the treaty at this time.

“However, we continue to view with great alarm this continuing dangerous maneuvers and dangerous actions that are being done against our seamen, our Coast Guard,” Marcos said in a statement. 

“And this time, they damaged the cargo ship and caused some injury to some of our seamen, and I think that we cannot view this in any way but the most serious way,” he said. 

China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, while the Philippines maintains that the shoal is located inside its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the waterway. Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also have territorial claims to the sea.

China has defended its action, saying it was justified because the Philippines intruded into its waters, despite the shoal internationally recognized as within Manila’s territorial jurisdiction. In 2016, the Philippines won a landmark case in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that threw out China’s expansive claims.

In Beijing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman on Wednesday called the China Coast Guard’s actions “justified, lawful, professional, restrained and beyond reproach.”

“The so-called arbitral award on the South China Sea arbitration that the Philippines and a handful of countries regard as a benchmark goes against international law including UNCLOS and it is completely illegal, null and void,” spokeswoman Mao Ning said, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

ASEAN-Australia statement

Meanwhile in Australia, participants at a special summit to mark the 50th Anniversary of ASEAN-Australia Dialogue Relations issued the Melbourne Declaration, which included calls for peace in the South China Sea region.

“We encourage all countries to avoid any unilateral actions that endanger peace, security and stability in the region. We emphasize the need to maintain and promote an environment conducive to the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea negotiations,” the statement said.

Responding to reporters, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday said, “I am very concerned and Australia is concerned about any unsafe and destabilizing behavior in the South China Sea. It is dangerous and it creates risks of miscalculation which can then lead to escalation.

“[T]here is a general recognition that we need to make sure that activity in the South China Sea alleviates any tension, doesn’t add to it.”

On Wednesday, Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Teresita Daza said the Marcos administration had made sincere efforts to lessen the tensions in the South China Sea by allowing departmental representatives to hold discussions with their Chinese counterparts. 

“China however has made references to supposed agreements or arrangements out of these discussions,” Daza said. 

“The Philippines has not entered into any agreement, abandoning its sovereign rights and jurisdiction over EEZ and continental shelf, including in the vicinity of Ayungin Shoal,” she said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller condemned China’s latest actions and called on it to stop its “dangerous and destabilizing conduct” in the South China Sea.  

“As provided under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, the 2016 arbitral decision is final and legally binding on the PRC and the Philippines, and the United States calls upon the PRC to abide by the ruling and desist from its dangerous and destabilizing conduct,” he said on Tuesday, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China. 

Miller said the mutual defense treaty extends to armed attacks on Philippine ships, including those of the coast guard, anywhere in the South China Sea.  

The Pentagon had previously said it was prepared to assist Manila if it invoked the 1951 treaty amid threats from other nations.

Jojo Riñoza and Jeoffrey Maitem in Manila contributed to this report.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

Malaysia should provide alternatives for the 12,000 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants being held in overcrowded and “degrading” immigration detention centers nationwide, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Wednesday. 

The “prolonged, judicially unsupervised detention” of these foreign detainees violates international human rights law, said the report that came out a month after more than 130 refugees broke out of a detention center in Perak state, with one of them struck and killed by a car while crossing a highway.

“Malaysian authorities are treating migrants as criminals, arbitrarily holding them for prolonged periods in immigration centers with almost no access to the outside world,” said Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Malaysia has 20 detention centers nationwide that are primarily supervised by the Immigration Department where the undocumented are detained before being extradited, said the 60-page report titled “‘We Can’t See the Sun’: Malaysia – Arbitrary Detention of Migrants and Refugees.” 

“Malaysia should seriously consider adopting measures used by other countries that better manage immigration objectives,” Bauchner said during a news conference in Petaling Jaya to announce the document’s release.

“Instead of maintaining abusive detention centers, the government should develop alternatives that protect the rights of children, refugees, and other vulnerable migrants.”

The 12,000 detainees living in these centers are a small fraction of the Southeast Asian country’s refugee and migrant population. Unofficial counts put the number of undocumented migrants in Malaysia at between 1.2 million and 3.5 million, the New York-based rights watchdog group reported. The migrant population is made up of people from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, India, and Cambodia, among others, according to HRW. 

There are more than 180,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). More than half are Rohingya from Myanmar sheltering in Malaysia, which is not a signatory of the U.N. Refugee Convention, HRW said.

Refugees interviewed for the report described the centers as degrading and “abusive” while noting that the detainees – among them 1,400 children – were denied their basic rights.

The report noted that six countries offered alternatives to detention. In the United States detainees were released but were required to wear electronic monitoring devices; in Spain, they were released into a program where they were given housing and proper assistance including Spanish language classes.

Malaysia Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution challenged HRW’s allegations. He said the centers were holding more detainees than listed in the report but were not overcrowded.

As for children, he said some had been removed from the prime detention facilities and placed at child-friendly shelters. Malaysia has set up two such shelters known as Baitul Mahabbah – in Negeri Sembilan and Sabah – adding two more are in the pipeline. 

“I know precisely the number of children in each center. Some of them I have removed from the detention and placed them at Baitul Mahabbah.

“On overcrowding, please mention it in detail which? Semenyih? KLIA? Tuaran? Please be clear to be fair so that we can get valid information on the situation,” the minister said.

“The centers were only overcrowded during COVID-19 because we could not send them home. Now there are 19 depots with 13,000 detainees, not crowded,” he told reporters in Kedah state.

Saifuddin did not address other allegations such as inhumane treatment.

Alleged abuses

HRW described gender-based abuse in the detention centers. 

Some women were given one pad a day and were required to strip and show their used sanitary products before receiving replacements.

“Most women interviewed said that no sanitary products were provided. Some were able to request pads from visiting family members, while those with no visitors had to rely on other detainees or use torn clothing,” HRW said in its report.

The watchdog also claimed that women who gave birth at the centers were not given postpartum care or diapers for their babies, adding “rape victims were reportedly arrested for their lack of documentation when attempting to file a report with police.”

Men reported being hit, kicked and beaten with rubber pipes or batons, being sent to an isolation block, having meals withheld, doing squats and pushups.

Shortages of water for drinking and bathing were common complaints. 

Quoting detainees, the report said scabies broke out in one of the overcrowded detention centers.

“If anyone was sick, we had to report to the officer and then the officer would tell the doctor. But when we would tell the officers that someone was ill, we were ignored unless that person was in critical condition,” the report quoted a detainee as saying.

HRW said the report was based on interviews of 43 people between January and March 2023, including 23 men and women who had been held in Malaysian detention centers. It also held a focus group discussion with 36 former detainees.

Anwar targeted 

HRW also took aim at Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The report said his government, which has been in power since November 2022, had done little in dealing with the plight of refugees despite his previous stand on protecting their rights.

In 2021, Anwar had challenged then-Home Minister Hamzah Zainuddin for not allowing the United Nations to be allowed inside to observe the detention centers. 

“We are disappointed that nothing has changed. [We are also] disappointed on the lack of information and human rights [among the refugees and migrants],” Bauchner said.

Jerald Joseph, former commissioner at the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM), said detention centers were meant to be temporary.  

“Why are some of them more than three months there? How come some Rohingyas have been in depots for five to six years,” he said at the report’s launch. “There is a lack of legal support for them as legal aid is only for Malaysians.” 

Recommendations

The report called for the government to change its focus on detainees. 

“Shift funding and resources from immigration detention centers to community-based alternatives to detention, with access to public services, housing, legal services, education and health care,” it said while urging the government to use interpreters as needed.

It also urged the government to allow detainees to have the means to communicate with family members and to implement programs legalizing the status of undocumented workers to address corruption and exploitation by employers.

Faribel Fernandez, management coordinator at Pusat Komas, a Malaysia NGO, said transparency was needed to ensure migrants are treated fairly and their rights are protected while ensuring detention centers are not overcrowded.

She said getting civil society organizations involved was key to bringing in fresh perspectives to deal with the issues, adding that setting clear rules for employment rights and standard procedures for immigration authorities would help create a fairer system. Pusat Komas aims to promote and enhance unity through the use of popular media.

“The government needs to demonstrate political will and engage in multi-ministry dialogues to enact these reforms effectively by looking at progressive models from our neighboring countries like Thailand to move forward,” she said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.