Rohingya refugees paid agents to get to UNHCR office: immigration DG

KUALA LUMPUR – The Immigration Department has found that some ethnic Rohingya have entered Malaysia by paying agents who would also bring them to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office here to get refugee cards.

Immigration Director-General Datuk Seri Khairul Dzaimee Daud said this matter will be scrutinised by a committee in the Home Ministry for further action.

“I had the chance to speak to some Rohingya who are UNHCR cardholders (in an Immigration operation) yesterday, and they confessed to entering Malaysia via Kedah and the Thai-Kelantan borders.

“They even admitted that it (entering Malaysia) was managed by agents, who also arranged trips to the UNHCR office in Kuala Lumpur to apply for the refugee cards.

“They (ethnic Rohingya) did not buy (the UNHCR cards) but they paid agents between RM5,000 and RM7,000 per person, and the agents would take them to the UNHCR office,” he was quoted as saying after the operation at a housing area in Kubang Menerong, Tasek Gelugor in Penang this morning.

Meanwhile, the operation that started at 11.15pm yesterday ended with the arrest of 10 Bangladeshi men, eight Indonesian men, five men and one woman from Myanmar, and one Nepalese man.

“They are being brought to the detention depot for investigation as some of them are suspected to hold fake UNHCR cards.”

The employer and foreign workers were fined more than RM2.5 million in total.

The Home Ministry has been criticised for implementing the Tracking Refugees Information System (TRIS) system for all UNHCR cardholders in the country.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin was reported on July 23 as saying that the system was approved to ensure that all data of individuals holding UNHCR cards are reregistered with TRIS, to identify the whereabouts of refugees.

TRIS is a Malaysian database system that relates to the status of UNHCR cardholders and asylum seekers, and also updates management and profile processes along with data collection, registration, profile storage, analysis, and reporting processes for the Malaysian government.  

The Alliance of Chin Refugees and Beyond Borders had described the TRIS system as “invasive, dehumanising, and open to abuse”, and that Malaysia has yet to show any commitment to international laws or humanitarian principles governing the protection of refugees. – AFP, September 17, 2022