Nov 9, 2020 | Opinion Articles, RM
By Mu Sochua
MP, Cambodia
In June 2014, the Thai government abruptly decided to crack down on undocumented migrant labour in the country, resulting in a mass exodus of some 220,000 Cambodian migrant workers who poured back across the border into Cambodia, leaving authorities here to deal with a sudden and unexpected influx of people in need of jobs.
Three years later, in July of this year, it happened all over again, as thousands were trucked back across the border after Thailand issued another abrupt change to its policies on migrant labour.
Meanwhile in Malaysia, the government is currently undertaking a large-scale crackdown on undocumented migrants, including raids that have resulted in thousands of arrests and thousands more living in fear of detention and deportation.
These recurring events, which affect the lives of hundreds of thousands, are manifestations of a wider problem throughout Southeast Asia. Migrant workers, who contribute immensely to the economies of both sending and receiving countries, remain at the whim of mercurial government policies and lack vital protections.
Given their undeniable contribution, along with Asean’s purported commitment to promoting a “people-centred” regional community, Asean has an obligation to do more to protect these workers. This entails responsibilities for both national governments and the regional grouping as a whole.
In 2007, Asean took an important first step towards fulfilling this obligation by adopting by the Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers. This document calls on sending countries like Cambodia to implement policies to protect outgoing workers throughout the recruitment process and while abroad. It also calls on receiving countries, such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, to protect the welfare, rights and dignity of migrant workers residing within their borders.
The declaration also commits Asean member states to develop a regional instrument to protect migrant workers. Since 2009, Asean governments have been deliberating over the specifics of this instrument. Many hope the result will be a legally binding treaty to protect migrant workers and their families. Such a treaty would place legal obligations on both sending and receiving countries to protect the human rights of migrants.
But a legally binding treaty is still far from a reality. Asean seems to have come to a standstill on this issue, and there is now talk of the treaty being simply “morally binding”. Given how dramatically Asean has collectively failed migrants thus far, however, it’s hard to imagine how a morally binding agreement would actually compel governments to act. The existing declaration on migrant workers already lacks teeth, failing to include any enforcement mechanism to ensure that member states live up to the commitments within it. Unsurprisingly, in the 10 years since the declaration’s adoption, cases of migrants being severely abused abroad have continued to flow in, and few governments have taken concrete action to protect them.
Asean just celebrated its 50th birthday, and there’s no denying that the regional organisation has come far since its inception. But it is also high time to think critically about how Asean moving forward can advance regional protections for all citizens.
Looking ahead, Asean, both as individual states and as a regional body, must review its protection mechanisms to ensure that commitments made on paper result in changes on the ground that will result in Asean living up to its vision of integrity and of “one community”. This should include the adoption of a legally binding treaty protecting the economic, social, cultural, religious and political rights of all migrant workers.
Migration within Asean is not something that will slow down for the foreseeable future. The significant disparities in availability of jobs and income between different countries in the region provide a strong incentive for people to move in search of better opportunities.
And Asean’s economic integration process has only encouraged more employers and workers to reach and move across borders. But all too often, these migrants are treated as a security threat, rather than as human beings and contributors to the economy.
Governments have a legitimate need to address undocumented workers in their countries. But doing so through a national security lens is shortsighted and will ultimately be unsuccessful. Instead, individual governments must focus their efforts on ensuring that migrants are protected and not treated as commodities.
Migrant workers are integral to our economic development, both at home and abroad. But they are also people. They are individuals, each with their own stories and reasons for packing their bags and heading to foreign countries to look for work.
Many leave behind young children in the care of their elderly parents. The resulting family separation can have long-lasting negative social and psychological impacts on the children, which should also be part of the policy discussion.
Asean governments would do well to bear in mind the human toll that punitive policies toward migrants and a failure to safeguard their rights can have when discussing and implementing policies that affect them.
This article originally appeared in the Phnom Penh Post.
Nov 9, 2020 | Opinion Articles, RM
By Charles Santiago
APHR Chairperson
MP, Malaysia
This repeats like a mantra in Malaysia. When journalists follow leads to break stories that take a whack at the government, cabinet members jump on a bandwagon to cry foul. Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, is no different.
He told Parliament that the Al-Jazeera report, which exposes entrenched graft in the movement of workers between Malaysia and migrant source countries especially Bangladesh, is misleading. The documentary suggests that a corrupt nexus between government officers and labour brokers makes the movement of workers to Malaysia a highly lucrative business.
Zahid Hamidi’s observation that the government has employed the new on-line E-Card System to register undocumented migrant workers in the country and that the system is transparent form the backbone of his rebuttal. I call this being irresponsible. It is rather shocking to hear the Home Affairs Minister simply dismiss away a complex and endemic problem.
It is suggested that there are about two million or more migrant workers in the country, employed largely in the small and medium industries. The fact is that only 23% or 161,056 undocumented foreign workers registered through the online platform. This suggests that the online registration was an epic fail as the government expected about 600,000 undocumented workers to be registered.
The failure of the E-registration has burnt a hole on our coffers. It is suggested that registering an undocumented migrant worker could cost anywhere between RM 4,000 to RM 6000. There is no guarantee that the immigration department would give registration permits to all workers. And there is no refund.
A good number of small and medium industries unfamiliar with the registration exercise used unscrupulous middle-men or labor brokers who failed to get their undocumented workers registered. Employers facing high cost of production and a slow economy were forced to let go of their undocumented workers rather than pay for the workers registration. This resulted in workers facing detention and non-payment of their wages, sometimes running to three months.
The government’s 6P Amnesty Program to register undocumented immigrants in the country in order to monitor their activities better failed as well. So clearly, the minister didn’t do his homework before his random verbal diarrhoea. But instead of taking the easy way out by nonchalantly dismissing the allegations raised by the foreign television channel, the government has to cut-off the role of middle-men, private employment agencies and labor brokers in the management of migrant workers.
This is because importing migrant workers is a business opportunity. Thus it comes as no surprise that migrant workers brought into the country far exceeds the actual manpower needs of the nation.Furthermore, lack of transparency of government to government MOUs has led to migrant workers and employers being overcharged by unscrupulous labor brokers.
Employers have repeatedly complained that private employment agencies acting as middlemen control the employment of migrant workers including charging exorbitant fees for employment of these workers. A forward looking strategy would be for Ahmad Zahid to follow the aims stipulated in the 11th Malaysian Plan.The national plan suggests that the proportion of migrant workers in the country’s workforce to be set at 15% by 2020. The report further states that the management of migrant workers is to be transferred to the Human Resources Ministry.
For now, Ahmad Zahidi has to account to Parliament on how the ministry plans to achieve the 15% target given that we have about two and half years left. Zahid Hamidi must also seriously consider the setting up of a national migration policy review by establishing a high level independent committee to address structural issues including entrenched corruption as raised by Al-Jazeera.
Nov 9, 2020 | BHR, DFF, RM, Statements
JAKARTA, 20 September 2016 — Parliamentarians from across Southeast Asia today condemned the conviction of migrant workers’ rights advocate Andy Hall on charges of criminal defamation for his research into conditions for migrant workers in Thailand. Members of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) warned that the ruling threatens to have a chilling effect on other researchers and advocates striving to protect the rights of migrant workers and other vulnerable groups around the region.
“Andy Hall has spent years working to protect the rights of marginalized workers in Thailand. He should be commended for his efforts, not fined and sentenced. This case amounted to legal harassment of a dedicated human rights defender, and today’s verdict is a major setback for free expression and principled advocacy,” said APHR Chairperson Charles Santiago, a member of the Malaysian Parliament.
A court in Bangkok this morning found British activist and researcher Andy Hall guilty of defamation, sentencing him to a suspended three-year prison term and fining him 150,000 Thai baht. The Natural Fruit Company sued Hall in 2013 following the publication of a report by Finnish NGO Finnwatch on conditions for migrant workers in the company’s factory in Thailand’s Prachuap Khiri Khan province. Hall conducted research for the report, which alleged that workers at the factory were being made to work long hours and being paid below minimum wage, among other abuses.
“The Thai authorities should be investigating alleged abuses by the companies employing these workers, not going after those working to uncover them,” Santiago said.
“Too often, migrant workers in Thailand are subjected to conditions that are simply unacceptable. Andy Hall was providing a valuable service to the millions of migrant workers from Myanmar and other countries, who toil every day with no guarantee of basic security or access to justice. It is a perversion of justice for Mr. Hall to be targeted for his actions. Sadly, the many thousands who are surely inspired by his work could be discouraged as a result of this ruling, fearing for their own security.”
In criticizing the decision to prosecute Hall, APHR also called for the repeal of criminal defamation statutes in Thailand and neighboring countries and an end to their use against human rights defenders.
“Criminal defamation laws should be repealed across the board,” said Santiago. “There is simply no reason why reputational harm to a company or individual should be punishable by jail time. Such penalties are disproportionate and go against universally accepted principles of free expression.”
Multiple ASEAN countries have criminal defamation laws on the books and have used them to go after rights defenders. Officials from prominent intergovernmental organizations, including the UN, have previously called for the abolishment of criminal defamation laws, arguing that they do not constitute a justifiable restriction on freedom of expression.
Click here to read this statement in Burmese.
