Critics dismiss Asean plan for free movement of labor, Irrawaddy

DESPITE the high-minded ideals of the Asean Vision 2020 plan launched more than a decade ago by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), cynics continue to dismiss its aim of labor mobility in a “community of caring societies” as just so much humbug.

A Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers, signed by Asean leaders in January 2007, “mandates Asean countries to promote fair and appropriate employment protection, payment of wages and adequate access to decent working and living conditions for migrant workers.”

A migrant worker holds his document during a raid by Malaysian civilian volunteers and immigration officers on a construction site in Kuala Lumpur in 2005. (Photo: AP) In reality, the millions of desperate migrants who hope to escape poverty and repression in their home countries, including Burma, by migrating to Thailand and Malaysia find anything but these conditions.

“Unregistered migrant workers often face poor working conditions, low wages, exploitation by employers and are prey to extortion by authorities and deportation,” says the US-based Human Rights Watch.

Many deported migrants also face punishment by the authorities in their home countries for the “crime” of trying to seek better living and working conditions abroad—even though these countries are Asean members and signatories to the January 2007 declaration.

In Malaysia, the government operates an ill-trained volunteer “security force” with powers of arbitrary arrest and detention of anyone they think looks like an illegal migrant—regardless of what documents a person is carrying.

The bumbling arrogance of the People’s Volunteer Corps was highlighted by the arrest of the wife of the Indonesian embassy’s cultural attaché while shopping in a Kuala Lumpur market last October. The corps, known by its Malay language acronym RELA, refused to recognize her identity card.

The Asia director of Human Rights Watch, Brad Adams, describes RELA as a vigilante force which should be disbanded.

Far from dispensing with RELA, however, the Malaysian government said in March it planned to use the organization in its next crackdown on illegal migrants.

Malaysia attracts Indonesians, Filipinos, Tamils from southern India and Sri Lanka, and Nepalese, as well as Burmese, some of whom make perilous sea journeys in small boats to reach its shores. Hundreds have failed to reach Malaysia, ending up on the beaches of southern Thailand.

The Malaysian interior minister said at the end of March that there are 2.1 million registered foreign workers in his country.

He also said there could be as many as 200,000 foreigners in the country who have overstayed their welcome. These are workers who were originally legally registered and then stayed on illegally when their work permits expired rather than face greater poverty or political repression back home.

Add to these the people who arrived illegally to work, and various non-government organizations (NGOs) put the unofficial figure for Malaysia at well over 2 million.

The International Federation of Human Rights (IFHR) in Paris has said the number could be as high as 5 million, with many living and working on rubber and palm oil plantations in remote parts of the Borneo region of Malaysia.

Illegal immigrants are exposed to summary arrest, the threat of deportation and a punishment that the IFHR says is illegal under international human rights laws—caning.

The Malaysian lawyers’ professional association, the Bar Council, representing more than 10,000 lawyers, has denounced caning as “cruel” punishment and called for its banning. The council says there is evidence of its increased use of detention centers where people are swept off the streets by RELA volunteers and are dumped with little access to legal help.

Even legal migrants are subject to repressive government-backed policies, not only in Malaysia but also in Thailand.

A prominent Thai social activist and former senator, Jon Ungphakorn, has called for all migrant workers reaching Thailand to be granted legal status because there is no evidence they are taking jobs that could be done by Thais.

“Unfortunately, within Thai society there are some widespread prejudices against migrant workers that make it difficult to reform our policies towards them,” Ungphakorn wrote in the English language daily the Bangkok Post.

Thailand’s Migrant Assistance Program reports that there were 616,000 registered foreign workers in the country at the end of 2007, about 60 percent of whom were Burmese. The others were mostly from Laos and Cambodia.

Unofficially, a number of NGO agencies estimate that the real number of foreign workers—legal and illegal—in Thailand is closer to 2 million.

In several Thai provinces, rules have been imposed making it unlawful for migrants to go out at night, carry mobile phones or ride motorbikes, according to Human Rights Watch.

Such legally dubious practices seem to contradict the spirit, at least, of the regular ministerial-level Asean meetings and summits, at which the 10 member countries map out plans to emulate the European Union’s open system of labor mobility across most of Europe.

By WILLIAM BOOT / BANGKOK MAY, 2008 – VOLUME 16 NO.5