DURBAN (Radiqradio.com) - The Malaysian government's denial that migrant workers are being maltreated in detention camps was strongly condemned at a recent NGO forum at the World Conference against Racism in Durban, Republic of South Africa.

Director of Tenaganita Irene Fernandez on Friday spoke to an international discussion group on Voices of Migrant Workers: Racism in Modern Slavery. The group listened to testimonies from migrant workers who had laboured in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Malaysia.

The testimony of the Bangladeshi worker who tried to eke out a living in Malaysia was delivered through a video. His family related how he left Bangladesh to earn a better living and to support them. He arrived in Malaysia to work in a hotel, but found he had been sold to a construction company instead.

On the video, his voice sang songs of misery and hardship, informal prisons that he was confident he would escape, though he spoke in despair of his inability to see a way out. He narrated how he was worried that the police would seize him, having found out after he arrived that his documents had been falsified. Police brutality, starvation and idle periods between bouts of hard labour punctuated his tale.

The story then switched back to his mother. She received tapes from her son, telling her of the hardships he faced. She began regular visits to the agent who had taken her inheritance in exchange for documents and a passage to Malaysia. Finally, the agent showed her a ticket, which promised her son's return the following Monday. The weekend was spent joyously preparing for the son's return home, cooking his favourite meals. Monday came, and the mother went to the airport, but as others came off the plane, she did not see her son.

She didn't see her son alive, he was sent back to Bangladesh from a Malaysian detention centre, having died in detention.

Appalling record

The group heard tales of an Indonesian woman whose ear is permanently deformed from beatings by her Saudi employer; the Filipina who ended up a hostess in a Japanese club; the Palestinians who brave a barrage of gunfire to work in Israel.

The forum called for a halt to the exploitation of migrant workers, for governments and employers to admit the essential work done by this group and to value migrant worker rights as human rights. Malaysia's appalling record of respect, legal protection and harassment of migrant workers made it a particular focus for attack.

Known formally as the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the event provides an opportunity for the world to engage, for the first time in the post-apartheid era, in a broad agenda to combat racism and related issues.

More than 15 heads of state and government and more than 12,000 representatives from 194 states and non-governmental organisations are participating in the United Nations-organised conference which ends on Sept 7.