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Malaysia Rounds up Hundreds of Undocumented Migrants amid Coronavirus Fears

Zsombor Peter

   KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian authorities Friday rounded up hundreds of
   undocumented migrants, including children and refugees, in the capital,
   Kuala Lumpur, in what the police are calling an effort to stem the
   spread of the coronavirus.

   Rights groups say the Labor Day raid was more of an immigration
   exercise at a time of rising xenophobia against refugees and that it
   may do more harm than good by discouraging many from coming forward for
   testing or treatment voluntarily.

   Authorities say the raid on the downtown neighborhood of Masjid India,
   home to many migrant workers, yielded nearly 600 people staying in the
   country illegally. The site has been under strict lockdown barring
   movement in or out since a cluster of COVID-19 cases was discovered
   there last month.

   The entire country has been under a partial lockdown, or "movement
   control order," since mid-March. It reported 6,176 cases of COVID-19
   and 103 deaths as of Sunday.

   National Police Inspector-General Abdul Hamid Bador said the
   undocumented migrants had to be rounded up to prevent them from
   sneaking out of the area and possibly spreading the virus to other
   parts of the city or country, state news agency Bernama reported.

   "We cannot allow them to move freely while the MCO is still in progress
   as it will be difficult for us to track them down if they leave the
   identified locations," he said.

   Hamid Bador added that those arrested would be held until the MCO is
   lifted and that the government would decide what to do with them after
   that.

   Police referred a call for comment from VOA to the Immigration
   Department. Calls and emails to the department went unanswered.

   Dozens of local rights groups have signed an open letter condemning the
   mass arrest as a step backward in the country's fight against the
   coronavirus just when it had started to flatten the curve.

   Malaysia relies on millions of migrant workers from neighboring
   countries to supply the cheap, unskilled labor running many of the
   country's rubber and palm oil plantations and factories. Most are
   believed to be in the country illegally, having either entered without
   the proper documents or remained after they expired.

   "The fear we have is if you start arresting now, the rest of the
   population ... will not go for testing even though the testing is
   free," said Sumitha Shaanthinni Kishna, director of migrant worker
   rights group Our Journey.

   "In terms of COVID, it's definitely not going to help because ... it's
   going to [instill] more fear. And if people like this go into hiding,
   how are you going to get them to come for testing?"

   In its own statement on Friday's raid, the United Nations said pushing
   undocumented workers into hiding could leave more potential cases
   untreated, "creating further risks to the spreading of Covid-19 to
   others."

   "Now is not the time for mass arrest and mass detention, simply because
   this does not stop the spread of the virus at all; in fact it
   encourages it," agreed Heidy Quah, founder of Refuge for the Refugees,
   another local rights group.

   Government officials had for weeks been trying to coax the country's
   refugees and undocumented migrants to get tested by offering to perform
   the procedure free of charge and promising not to dig into their
   immigration status.

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