Jakarta – After having previously taken a soft position [on refugees] and stating that it will give temporary residency permits to hundreds of Acehnese asylum seekers in Malaysia, yesterday, the Malaysian Foreign Minister, Syed Hamid Albar, did an about turn and issued a strong statement [on the issue]. According to Albar, giving permission to Acehnese citizens to stay will only create problems.

“If Malaysia supports the asylum seekers, this will encourage other people to enter Malaysia. We [stand] together with the government of Indonesia and have agreed to prevent more and more Acehnese citizens coming to Malaysia”, Albar said in Kuala Lumpur on Monday (25/8).

Albar rejected criticisms by the United Nations Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) which has accused Malaysia of arresting the asylum seekers when they were in the process being registered with the UNHCR offices in Kuala Lumpur.

“The UNHCR has no right to register them as refugees, because they are not actually refugees. They are Acehnese people who have entered Malaysia without valid travel documents”, he said.

Moreover, according to Albar, Malaysia is not one of the signatories of the UN Convention on Refugees, in legal terms therefore, they do not recognise the terms refugee or asylum seeker. “All Acehnese citizens who are presently being detained in the Langkap [immigration station in Perak] are to be deported”, he said. If Malaysia supports refugees that arrive [in the country], Malaysia will have to deal with may other illegal arrivals.

Evidence that it is not safe

On Monday meanwhile, the Solidarity Movement for the People of Aceh (Solidaritas Gerakan Rakyat Untuk Aceh, SEGERA) and the Central Organisational Committee of Acehnese People’s Democratic Resistance Front (Front Perlawanan Demokratik Rakyat Aceh, FPDRA), stated that the hundreds of Acehnese citizens that have fled to Malaysia to seek asylum at the UNHCR headquarters are an indication that the conditions in Aceh are not safe.

“This must be seen by the government as a self-criticism of the military emergency [in Aceh] which has created terror and fear among the civilian population there. The claim by the emergency military command in Aceh that Aceh is safe, has been proven to be just empty talk”, said the chairperson of FPDRA, Thamrin Ananda.

The poor guarantees of safety for the civilian population in Aceh has already forced hundreds of Acehnese citizens to take refuge in Malaysia and seek political asylum. The chairperson of SEGERA, Yusuf Lakaseng called on the government to look at these facts as a open self-criticism of the military emergency.

Looking at the tendency for the armed security operation to be prioritised while neglecting other operations such as the humanitarian operation and the operation to uphold the law in order to win the hearts and minds of the Acehnese people, Yusuf was extremely pessimistic that the military emergency will bring satisfactory results.

“The closure of access to [outside] investigations and monitoring in Aceh represents and indication that the emergency military command is afraid of what they themselves are doing”, said Yusuf.

A third country

With regard to the asylums seekers at the Kuala Lumpur UNHCR who have refused to be repatriated to Aceh, SEGARA and FPDRA urged the Malaysian government and the international community to provide guarantees of safety and protection. “If Malaysia is not prepared to provide political asylum, then the UNHCR must seek a third country with is prepared [to do so]”, said Yusuf.

Thamrin rejected the forced repatriation of hundreds of asylum seekers back to Aceh. The experiences of the repatriation of thousands of Acehnese citizens from Malaysia in 1998 was that as soon as they arrived in Aceh they were detained in [the notorious] Rancung [military detention and interrogation centre] in Lhokseumawe and intimidated. (AFP/INU)

[Translated by James Balowski.]