STATEMENTS
Malaysia Deportees are Refugees that Deserve Safe Safe Heaven—Bayan

AS IT joined the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) in a picket in front of the Malaysian Embassy in Makati City this morning, the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) today castigated Kuala Lumpur for “turning a blind eye to the reality that the thousands they have cruelly and inhumanely deported are actually refugees seeking a safe haven from war-torn Mindanao.”

Bayan Secretary-General Teodoro A. Casiño said “Malaysia is reaping what it has sowed. Its barbaric treatment of Filipino deportees deserve condemnation and reproach.”

“The correct way to treat refugees is not to shove them back to the place they escaped from but to provide them sanctuary,” said Casiño, adding that “there are internationally-accepted ways of dealing with them and this definitely does not include the Gestapo-like manner taken by Kuala Lumpur.”

Independent estimates place at 60,000 the number of Filipino refugees and migrants in Malaysia. The migration reportedly started in the 1970’s.

“Most of them left Mindanao primarily to escape the endless all-out wars unleashed by the Philippine government as well the continuing lack of livelihood opportunities for Muslim Filipinos,” Casiño said.

The Bayan leader said “the flight and plight of 60,000 refugees in Malaysia is an indictment of the false promises of peace and development made by successive Philippine governments from Marcos to Macapagal-Arroyo.”

“It is evident that they have become hopeless over the incessant military campaigns waged by the Philippine government that only excacerbate the poverty situation among Muslim Filipinos. So desperate they have become that they left their homeland for Malaysia,” said Casiño.

“This should be a signal for the Arroyo government to immediately lift the all-out war policy in Mindanao and provide the refugees a reason to stay in the country. The President should be honest enough to admit that proven failures of the militarist solution to solving the long-running problems in Mindanao like land dispossession, chauvinist policies and the spread of anti-Moro sentiments,” he added.

August 29, 2002

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