NON-GOVERNMENTAL organisation Asylum Access Malaysia (AAM) has expressed concern over the number of children held in immigration detention centres nationwide.

AAM executive director Tham Hui Ying said there are about 700 children in these centres, with more than half of them left unaccompanied.

She said this during a discussion on the matter at the virtual launch of Amnesty Annual Report Launch 2020.

“The government has said there are children under detention and as of November 2020, there were more than 700 of them at immigration detention centres, where over 50% are unaccompanied,” she said.

“We do not know what the situation is now ... that of course is something that is very worrying.”

Last year, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Home Ministry revealed that 756 children were being held at immigration detention centres across the country as of Oct 26.

According to the figures given, the number consists of 488 male and 268 female children. 

The ministry said 405 children were being held at the centres without their respective guardians.

After the government implemented a nationwide lockdown on March 18 last year, Senior Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob publicly encouraged undocumented migrants to come forward for Covid-19 testing, promising that they would not be detained.

However, the authorities later descended on several areas in Kuala Lumpur, rounding up thousands of people in a move that sparked widespread condemnation.

Tham said even women, children or newborns were not spared during the raids and arrests.

“We also received reports of women with newborns and infants being detained and separated,” she said.

Today, in releasing their report for 2020, Amnesty International Malaysia said the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic is especially harsh on refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers.

The report stated that more than 600 people contracted Covid-19 after an outbreak emerged at immigration detention centres.

Tham pointed out that lack of space at overcrowded detention centres sparked the outbreak.

“The immigration detention centres are already crowded, but the mass raid and arrest then added to the problem. 

“Based on the facts we know, those detainees were tested before they were arrested, but subsequently contacted Covid-19 as a result of the situation they were placed in. 

“In some situations, this led to deaths of some of the detainees,” she said, adding that the government ignored the standard operating procedures (SOP) and safety measures during the raids and arrests of these people.

Katrina Maliamauv, the executive director of Amnesty International Malaysia, said the government’s response to Covid-19 exposes the inequalities that exist in the country.

“Populations already marginalised due to discrimination, including poor, migrant, refugees, asylum seekers, indigenous persons, were the hardest hit groups as they faced challenges, including access to food, multiple mass raids and arrests, loss of employment, outbreaks of Covid-19 in workplaces and detention centres as well as rise in xenophobia,” she said.

The report also highlighted that Malaysia, which saw a change in government in February last year, saw a significant regression in freedom of expression.

It said that human rights defenders who criticised or protested the change in government were investigated while journalists covering raids on migrants also faced questioning by authorities.

Laws restricting speech such as the Sedition Act and Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) continue to be used while efforts to repeal and review them have stalled.

Besides this, it stated that LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) people continue to face discrimination while indigenous peoples across the country remain under threat of losing land to development and logging.

Despite the government voted for a global moratorium on executions in the United Nations, no progress has been made on the abolition of the death penalty domestically, the report said. 

Allegations of abuse by police, including deaths in custody, were not transparently addressed, while the government withdrew the Independent Police Complaints of Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) bill, replacing it with a weaker version that has yet to be voted on. 

“The government must not only urgently introduce human rights reforms, it must also address policies that have led to the inequality, discrimination and oppression of vulnerable groups we so clearly saw at the height of the pandemic,” said Katrina. – April 7, 2021.