Who will guard the guards?

On paper Malaysia seems like a nice country where everyone lives in harmony. The truth is less positive, or at least my version of it. Divided as the people are by race and religion, this country could be one of the most discriminative countries in the world, where racism is like tar slowly boiling underneath the surface and cracking up once in a while. Most Malaysians do not define themselves as Malaysian, rather as Malay, Chinese or Indian. Being a foreigner, you’d notice that quite fast. Struggles between these races date way back and are still a common phenomenon. But that’s not what I’m going to write about here. The subject of this posting is the discrimination against immigrants, foreign workers who often come from poorer countries, cheap labour in search of a better future. Or is it a better future?

Last Sunday Jeff and I took my mom for a little sightseeing tour through Kuala Lumpur. We went to Thean Hou Temple, KLCC and Chinatown. Jeff left us in Chinatown to go to his office in Bangsar. As my mom and I were walking back from Chinatown towards Pasar Seni LRT station, a guy in a green uniform approached us and asked for our ID. I asked why, all he said was “ID, check.” All in Bahasa Melayu. He took my gold card (Expatriate Employment Pass issued by the Malaysian immigration) and my mom’s copy of her Indonesian passport and asked us to follow him a few meters down the road. The square underneath the LRT station was packed with green officers, Immigration people in blue and heaps of people waiting in line, some looking frightened, all of them Asian. I immediately knew what was happening: it’s one of those immigration raids conducted by Immigration personnel and Ikatan Relawan Rakyat Malaysia (RELA), publicly known as Malaysia’s controversial baton-wielding volunteer reserve, mobilized to tackle the immigration issue. The elections were coming up and Malaysia somehow had to deal with the numerous undocumented workers overflowing the country. So the government has launched a rounding-up operation called Ops Tegas and put on green uniforms on trigger-happy brutal monkeys to slay defenseless immigrants whenever they have the chance.

There were people sitting in caged trucks, ready for transport to detention camps; people squatting on the ground with their hands above the heads, surrounded by green soldiers and their rods; people waiting in line to be checked, including us. An officer asked us where we were from. I said I was a citizen of the Netherlands. He seemed to be taken aback - thinking what I think he did, “She surely doesn't look Dutch”. I do get that a lot.

My card got checked by another officer; no problem there but I was ready to call my boss if I had had to. My mom had to undergo a brief interrogation. “Are you Indonesian? Yes, but I live in Holland with my Dutch husband. What are you doing in KL? I’m visiting my daughter. What is your daughter doing in KL? She’s working here.”

They seemed to be satisfied and we could go. Just as we were about to walk away from the scene, a lady took my forearm and wrote with a black marker the word “OK”. That was my clearance. I was dumbstruck. I felt like a cattle being certified for slaughter. Then we saw other people with multiple numbers written on their forearms, like some sort of contamination code. The inhumanity. And that was my mom's first day in Kuala Lumpur. Never ever had we been treated like this; not even in my native country.

The worst part of it all was the fact that these so-called reservists do not have the courtesy, the decency or the politeness to answer simple questions. Instead, they were acting like they own the kingdom of heaven, having been authorised to use weapons and lacking proper training and mentality. You could smell the arrogance fuming out of their nostrils. They could have simply explained to us that they were checking for documents for immigration purposes. One simple sentence – even a single smile – would have made all the difference in the world.

Another thing is the prejudice that they have towards Indonesians, or most probably all other Asian countries besides Malaysia and Singapore. Everyone is aware of the fact that illegal immigrants still make up a large population of the country. They come from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc. Sadly to say, in spite of all the problems that they might cause, the economy depends heavily on them as foreign laborers, legal and illegal, do jobs that most Malaysian citizens would not dirty their hands with. There seems to be limited tolerance for these groups of immigrants, with or without proper ID.

Mind you that all this applies to non-Caucasians. There was no single white person who got caught that day during the raid. They would never dare touching Caucasians and their dollar signs. If Jeff were around, it would never have happened. If I had blond hair and blue eyes, it would never have happened. They simply assumed that because I look Asian and speak Bahasa Indonesia, I am worth of suspicions. The injustice.

With hundreds of thousands of foreigners claimed to be living outside the law and widely blamed for rising crime, RELA reservists are supposed to contribute to the country’s safety by tracking and deporting illegal immigrants. However, RELA has been accused of numerous criminal acts including torture and abuse and questions have been raised about their accountability, nationally and worldwide. Last year five foreign workers turned up dead in an area called Selayang during a raid. The Malaysian government issued a statement denying any correlation between the deaths and the raid and exonerating the RELA team.

Foreign workers can turn up dead and it won’t make front page news. Why? Because they’re not local Malays, Indians or Chinese? Because they’re some filthy low-class citizens that do not deserve a place to live in society? This country has serious discrimination and human rights problems. People know but who would care; that too won’t make big news and even if it did, it’s written on a side column. In the meantime, the RELA roams free. Protecting people from illegals; but who will protect the illegals? It makes me wonder, just like Juvenal in his time, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Who will guard the guards?

PS. Countless stories have been written on RELA. Here are an interesting blog posting and a news article that I found on the net for some background reading.