Don’t make statelessness worse, govt urged

KUALA LUMPUR: The perennial problem of statelessness has inflicted injustice on thousands of people born in this country and to rectify this, the government should reconsider five of its proposed constitutional amendments, says civil society.

Social Protection of Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas director Maalini Ramalo called on Putrajaya to defer the five proposed amendments that she said would take away the existing rights of citizenship of stateless children.

“These amendments will cause more statelessness,” she said during a public forum on “Malaysians Without ICs and Statelessness”, moderated by Malaysian Bar secretary Anand Raj at Wisma Badan Peguam here yesterday.

Maalini said the proposed amendments on foundlings, children of permanent residents, constitutional safeguards against statelessness, foreign spouses to Malaysian men, and age limits to acquire citizenship, need to go.

“Tunku Abdul Rahman (Putra Al-Haj) once said that ‘a child should not be punished because of the father’s sin, a child should not be branded stateless because of the tightening of the citizenship law that we are intending’,” she said, referring to the nation’s first prime minister.

“It makes sense and that’s why we have Section 1(e) of Part II of the Second Schedule to the Federal Constitution and Article 15(a) of the Constitution,” she added.

First inserted by Parliament in 1963, Section 1(e) states that every person born in Malaysia who is not a citizen of any country will be a citizen, and this has created a safety net for stateless people who are born in Malaysia.

Article 15(a) provides special power to register children under the age of 21 as citizens.

The Home Ministry has proposed several constitutional changes which, among others, would grant Malaysian mothers the equal right to confer citizenship upon their overseas-born children, on the same basis as Malaysian men.

However, Maalini said five of the proposed amendments would remove the safety net intended to protect Malaysian-born children and eliminate an important judicial avenue for them to escape statelessness in the country’s current legal-bureaucratic landscape.

Deputy Entrepreneur and Cooperatives Development Minister Saraswathy Kandasami, who was part of the panel at the forum, agreed that some of the amendments would make the citizenship process even more difficult.

Nevertheless, she said the government is committed to its institutional reform pledge, adding that the current proposal should address existing issues.

“There’s been an injustice caused to thousands of people who should be identified. The cruelty on them must be rectified.

“I am offering a proposal on my side and I will approach the Home Minister to see how we can streamline this. We can go ahead with the other amendments but these five must be deferred.

“There is political will on the unity government’s side, which is why I am here. We hope to close the bridge between the administration and civil society, to understand the actual reality of stateless people,” she said.

Also part of the panel were Bar Council human rights committee chairman Larissa Ann Louis and human rights lawyer and Lawyer Kamek for Change director Simon Siah.

There are at least 10,000 people in Peninsular Malaysia who have been denied citizenship, while the number in Sabah and Sarawak is unknown. Among others, stateless people are deprived of education and healthcare.