A nation of migrants
No, I am not just referring to the Chinese and Indian Malaysians but also the Malay Malaysians. The majority of the Malays are descendants of migrants from Indonesia that flocked to British Malaya in the 19th and 20th centuries. These migrants were of the Deutero Malay stock that arrived in the Golden Chersonese hitherto occupied by the Negrito and Khmer orang asli.
But we seem to forget this fact. The attitude of the Malaysian society as a whole the public, the employers, the authorities seem to reek with contempt and disgust at those we derogatorily call the Indons and Banglas.
Frequently, we seem to view them in a way similar to slave-master relationship, not a symbiotic relationship between fellow human beings. We think that they should be grateful to us for providing them jobs and believed that they have an inherent tendency to commit crime and disrupt our lives. What about the much larger number of crimes committed by fellow Malaysians and the corruption committed by politicians and civil servants?
Irene Fernandez is right to challenge these xenophobes. The foreign workers have benefitted a lot from the economic opportunities that our blessed land has provided them as our economic boom prior to the economic crisis of '`97 could only be sustained by the high influx of foreign labour. Our own population, in contrast to neighbouring Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, was too small to support the then booming economy.
Our exports remain competitive largely due to the cheap labour they provide. The locals prefer to work in the factories rather than the lower paying plantation or domestic help sectors, thus we depend on the foreign workers for our economic well-being. Many critics of foreign workers who called for their deportation include the middle-class who depend on Indonesian and Filipino domestic help while they slogged it out in the rat race.
Economic desperation
Indeed, had they have a choice, most of the foreign workers would prefer to work in their persantrens, villages and hometowns close to their loved ones and in familiar territory. But their decision is driven almost purely by economic desperation why else would a young mother leave her children and chart a journey to an unknown land?
Most of the time, their entry is illegal due to the lack of enforcement on our part, and more significantly, corrupt collusion between the exploitive agents and our authorities. When the workers are handed to agencies that are solely interested in making profits without the slightest thought for the well-being of these workers; they would probably be forced to hand over their passports.
This leaves them at the mercy of their agencies and employers. While workers in Malaysia are all generally unprotected, the foreign workers are even worse off. It is hardly surprising since our politicians who are known to show an interest in their electorate only during elections would not bother about them as they are politically unimportant.
Take the scenario of a maid. With her documents either with the agency or her employers, she would be working from morning to night, seven days a week, 365 days a year, without a break unless her employers decide so. Frequently, the wages are being paid out to an account and she is allowed puny amounts for her to spend!
It is hardly surprising at the incidences where employers exploited, tortured and raped their maids as appeared in the local media not long ago, as under current conditions, it leaves a large room for exploitation by the employers and agencies. Without any documents, it makes running away from abusive employers difficult, as our police tend to harass and punish them instead if they ran away without their documents. It is a Catch-22 situation if they stay they would be punished, but running away would get them into trouble as well.
Crime-prone troublemakers
We also have the mentality of viewing migrants as being crime-prone troublemongers. This is sad as we easily condemn the West for being racist (Pauline Hanson is a favourite focus of diatribe) towards Asians and Africans for which we claim to be the voice but it seems that we are no different. It is greatly surprising that even Malays often are racists to their own kin (not that racists against other races can be justified) the Indonesians. That is why in writing about this issue a few years back, Amir Muhammad called it a matter of class, rather than race.
Statistics have shown that more crime in Malaysia is committed by Malaysians; and furthermore, the crimes that are committed by these 'ungrateful' foreigners are proportionately small compared to their total population thus the assumption that they are crime prone is totally false. But this seems the view that is being advocated by our leaders and the mass media.
In 1996, a Malay daily editorial wrote: "Throughout our country, the Banglas have an image that is unbecoming to the eyes. How they dress, how they gather by the roadside and bus stops, how they live and the way they disturb local girls."
It was totally distasteful. If this is the view that can come out from the mass media, surely the public possess more xenophobic attitudes! Furthermore the article justified an attack on Bangladeshis by Malaysians, saying that the incident was a manifestation of the local opinion.
Collective moral responsibility
To a certain extent, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's statement regarding the Nilai fracas that too many foreigners are a problem as they tend to band together and create trouble is true. But he should remember that this influx was because of his persistent determination to develop our economy at such an astonishing rate.
The government has to take active steps to stop illegal migration which is partly caused by corruption and collusion with interests of syndicates and also, importantly, provide legislation to protect the workers from exploitation, which is another cause of unrest.
All of us have a collective moral responsibility to overcome our racist attitudes and treat the foreign workers in our midst with respect. After all, we are all the children of migrants.
NIK NAZMI NIK AHMAD is a 20-year-old college student who is attached on a part time basis to the Political Education Unit, Institute for Policy Research (UPP-IKD). He is also editor of SuaraAnum.com.
