COMMENT Ever since Irene Fernandez left us, I have thought about what I could possibly write about her. She was nice enough to always look happy to see me, and I’d like to think we shared a lovely warmth, but I cannot pretend to have known her, or even her work, well enough to write something that has not already been written better.

As I sat through her funeral yesterday however, it finally occurred to me how I - and hopefully the rest of us - might be able to pay some sort of meaningful tribute.

I had the great fortune of being invited to dinner last night with some artists of great talent and even greater heart. One of the things we talked about was heroes, and I reflected on how perhaps instead of always looking to heroes to win our battles, we should instead think about the capacity inside each and every one of us to become little heroes ourselves.

I think Irene dedicated her life to blazing a great path, and I think there is no better way of honouring her memory than to care about what she cared about, and to do some serious work on the things she worked on.

The pillars of our economy

In that vein, I’d like to spend most of this article sharing some thoughts about migrant workers, and how we treat them in Malaysia.

When we look at Irene’s life in its entirety, I think it becomes clear why she chose to invest so much of her life into helping migrant workers. Not only did she reach out to the downtrodden, she sought out a group of people that are perhaps the most downtrodden of all in Malaysia.

In our world divided artificially into nation-states, we are doubly suspicious of outsiders and aliens - people we perceive to be from faraway places, who we sometimes suspect of coming here to take a bit out of a pie that belongs rightfully to us, and who we often blame when we think of rising crime in the country.

I often think of the premise of a film called ‘A Day Without a Mexican’, in which all the Mexicans in the state of California suddenly disappear, which results (whether predictably or not seems in fact to be the question) in a collapse of the state’s functionality.

I have little doubt that the same would happen in Malaysia, should all our migrant labourers suddenly disappear.

It would be extremely foolhardy to underestimate the pillar of migrant labour upon which our economy currently runs. After all, when was the last time you walked into a restaurant in KL, or anywhere in the country, for that matter, without seeing at least one migrant worker?

It is the sweat and blood of Indonesians, Burmese, Bangladeshis and many others that is literally building our country around us, much more so than Malaysians. I remember visiting ramshackle Burmese settlements in the jungles of Putrajaya, within sight of the sprawling megalopolis they built, and hearing their tales of how the authorities would occasionally swoop down and tear even these extremely basic makeshift homes down to the ground.

How Malaysia abuses the most powerless

I’m not here to pretend that every single migrant labourer is an angel, no more so than every single Malaysian is an angel - or for that matter a devil who mistreats migrant labourers. I have generally found the proportion of good eggs to bad eggs to be roughly the same in any group or community of people.

That said, I think that we as a nation could do a lot better in treating those who come here to work for us - both at the governmental policy level, and on a more personal, human-to-human level.

One of the most glaring injustices is the way in which our authorities not only allow, but often actively perpetrate the abuse of migrants in Malaysia.

To begin with, true to their nature of abusing their power to prey on any powerless group of people from whom they can make a quick buck, Malaysian authorities have long profited illegally from human trafficking.

The impression one gets is that there is a revolving door of migrants who come into the country, get caught and deported, and then come back in again. At every stage, someone is getting paid off.

There’s little doubt that this is at least a multi-million industry, essentially robbed from a group of people with already so little to their name, and desperate enough to travel thousands of kilometres away from home in search of a better life.

Worse, this cycle includes a considerable amount of physical abuse - detention in abhorrent conditions, beatings, and rape seem to be par for the course.

Much of such abuse in this world is able take place because it hides under the cover of darkness. Immigration detention centres are kept far from the eyes of the world, and are filled with souls who have no close family or friends to care or blow a whistle at their ongoing torment.

Until very recently, at the very least they had Irene Fernandez. Now they only have you and I.

Recognising each other’s humanity

While this bigger battle rages on, let us not forget the smaller every day ones as well.

I remember a mini-play I saw once, at the Five Arts Centre. A construction labourer came home to his tiny domicile, washed his clothes, and looked for a while at photos of his family, before standing straight on top of a bucket, putting on a blank white mask, and waving a flag up and down mechanically.

I guess the question being asked was: Have we come to look at migrant labourers as little more than those mechanical roadside mannequins directing traffic?

Are they invisible people we are happy to use in order to keep prices down, but whom we we want to otherwise keep out of sight, away from our children?

My family’s current domestic helper has been with us for over a decade, and whenever she goes home for a break, our household barely manages to stay afloat. She feeds us, cleans up, keeps the house running like clockwork, and is practically part of the family; but I’m sure even we could probably do more to make her feel more at home.

I sometimes reflect on how much more she sees of us, than she does of her own husband and children. How many of us can possibly know what it’s like to make a sacrifice like that?

Perhaps this is another small way we can honour Irene’s memory - reminding one another to see humans, with families, loved ones, and stories just like the rest of us, not just mannequin labourers.

Remembering our own roots

One of the people at last night’s dinner was Douglas Lim. In the last show of his I caught some time back, the climax of his long run of jokes started by talking about trying to identify non-Malaysians in voting lines during GE13.

He ended the bit by saying something like: “Terrible right? It’s GE 13, you’re lining up to exercise your one major democratic right in five years, and all around, there are these foreigner looking people you don’t know or trust, looking like they’re going to steal your country away. Hmm, funny though... I wonder if that was what the Malays felt in GE1.”

The predominantly Chinese audience greeted him with pindrop silence.

Migration has not only always been part of the Malaysian fabric, it has always been part of our global fabric. No doubt we need to navigate these dynamics carefully, but we also need to navigate them holistically.

These people are human beings, whose future in our society must be planned out in a sustainable way, instead of being treated as pack animals to be sent in and out as we please.

Irene’s daughter Katrina spoke yesterday of how Irene used to love to lift her young children up above her head, and pretend that they were flying. Katrina talked of how Irene brought this motherly habit of lifting up those who had trouble lifting themselves into all aspects of her life; this is probably what the world will remember her best for.

I daresay that remembering will not be enough though, not if we really want to honour her work. Irene is resting after all that lifting, and expects us to take up her burdens.

Many organisations do work with migrants, organisations that I’m sure would benefit from more support, in whatever form: The Women’s Aid Organisation, a small NGO I used to work for called A Call to Serve, Irene’s own Tenaganita - all these and more are only a Google search and quick offer of assistance away.

Perhaps we’ll join the fight head-on against the authorities that abuse and brutalise the downtrodden and powerless; or perhaps we’ll help ensure those around you treat migrants as respectfully you would any parent, brother, sister or child. Best yet, perhaps we’ll do both.

NATHANIEL TAN would like to thank the Fernandez family for loving Irene, and for being a light to us all.