Just give them the IC

By Stephen Ng

        The story of Rohana Abdullah,, an abandoned child of Malaysian and Indonesian parentage, being raised by a former school teacher is a heartwarming story.

        This is the true Malaysian spirit, where the girl was raised by someone who took sympathy of her. Chee Hoi Lan is now probably a retiree, who went the extra mile to raise the child; Rohana, in return, is making every effort to ensure that her adopted mother, Chee is well taken care of while Rohana has to relocate to Melaka to pursue her education.

        As I write this article, I think Chee should be nominated as the Mother of the Year. I am not sure if she has her own children, but the bond between Chee and Rohana is simply amazing.

        This is indeed the spirit of true humanity. It has, and it will always remain a Malaysian thing, except that its light has always been clouded by the politics of racism.

        With Indonesia now moving ahead of Malaysia, if we continue to go down the path led by ultra-Malay politicians who continue to shout slogans just to score brownie points with their voter base, we are doomed as a nation.

        I remember years ago, my eyes teared and I had to leave the room just to control my emotions, when Nurul Anwar said these words during an interview with Patrick Teoh, “After so many years as a nation, why are we still talking about the races?” A former neighbour of mine, the late Inspector Tan Kok Chee used to ask the same question.

Stateless Cases in Malaysia

        My next question is: Why are we still having so many cases of stateless people in Malaysia? When the Member of Parliament of Kepong, Lim Lip Eng sent out word that his service centre was offering to help stateless people, I remember him telling me that he had a long queue outside his centre.

        The problem with the then Pakatan Harapan, as we now see it, is because there were people like Muhyiddin Yassin, who placed his political career above the people’s problems. I wrote an open letter to Muhyiddin on a number of cases which he conveniently ignored.

        I can expect to be ignored because I am only an ordinary citizen who is willing to speak up on injustices, but for a senior cabinet minister who was his predecessor to complain about his lack of response even to her SMSes, it simply shows Muhyiddin’s true colours.

        To stretch my point further, it was not as if the former cabinet minister was asking for a special favour, but she was merely assisting another person with her problem dealing with ministry officials. Muhyiddin could have at least responded to his former colleague and assigned one of his men to look into the complaint.

        Therefore, Muhyiddin’s failure to respond to the open letter is not surprising. This was such a big contrast to Anifah Aman who immediately reached out to the family of a Malaysian woman,

        Cheng Chau Yang who was stranded in China with her son, after her sister Myra Cheng wrote a letter which was published by Free Malaysia Today.

        After several months, and regular updates from Anifah, one midnight I received a call from Myra telling me that her sister and nephew had landed at the KLIA. The family thanked Anifah profusely for his willingness to follow up with his counterpart in China on two occasions before the mother-and-son were allowed to leave China.

Just Grant them Citizenship

        In my open letter to Muhyiddin, I raised the issues faced by a stateless girl, Belle Chok (her real name withheld) who, like the proverbial saying goes, ‘sudah jatuh ditimpa tangga pula,’ had been diagnosed of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). As a stateless child, she is not entitled to free medical treatment even in the local hospitals.

        Although Muhyiddin was Minister of Home Affairs, he did nothing about it. Instead, it was Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad and Dr Lee Boon Chye, along with their special officers, who helped this case. They discovered that children, whether citizen or otherwise, are entitled to medical treatment if they are 12 years old and below.

        But now the child is 14 years old, and still stateless. I have managed to seek for a budget of RM5000 to be approved by a church, but how long can this last for her medication that works out to be about RM800 every month? Even though the child has been trying to raise her own funds by selling her artwork, how long does she have to wait before she gets her citizenship?

        What irked most of us is when the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Project IC in Sabah revealed the granting of citizenship to many foreigners during former Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad which has since changed the demographics of Sabah.

        While many cases similar to that of young people like Rohana and Belle are languishing without citizenship, thousands of people in Sabah were given citizenship with the stroke of the pen. And, although the apparent culprit behind Project IC is obvious to many of us following the inquiry, till today, the perpetrators have not been charged in court.

        Meanwhile, the social media has highlighted some Banglas holding their blue Identity cards. Whether these are fake or genuine, it certainly raises a lot of questions when many of them are able to exploit the system to operate their businesses while the local authorities continue to keep an eye closed.

        The issue of statelessness is, in fact, the fault of the parliamentarians who in 1962, had amended the Federal Constitution to change from jus soli (citizenship by right of soil) to jus sanguinis (citizenship based on ethnicity of one or both parents). You can follow through debates during the parliamentary sitting in the Hansard Volume III (No 42) dated 31 January 1962.

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        If the current government acknowledges the mistake made by the ruling coalition back in the sixties, it is time to do a reset, and restore the laws to the original principle of jus soli. While that may require a lot of political will, at the very least, the Prime Minister should provide for many cases similar to Rohana and Belle, where either parent is a Malaysian, the right to citizenship and end their misery.