Image Credits - Al Jazeera
Malaysia is actively looking for dozens of Rohingya refugees and other individuals from Myanmar who managed to escape from a temporary immigration detention centre in the northern state of Perak. On Thursday night, 131 guys left the Bidor prison as a result of the breakout, leaving one person dead.
In a statement, the Immigration Department stated that the escape occurred as a result of a riot inside the camp, which took the life of a man who was struck by a car while attempting to cross the main north-south highway. Sixteen of the escapees were from various ethnic groups in Myanmar, and 115 of them were Rohingya.
Director-general of the Immigration Department Ruslin Jusoh announced that 375 police, military, and reservist volunteers are part of a comprehensive search operation that has been started in reaction to the incident.
Ever since the Rohingya population began to flee in large numbers in 2017 from Myanmar to Bangladesh due to a violent military campaign, Malaysia has become an increasingly popular location for these refugees. A genocide investigation is presently underway by the International Court of Justice.
In 2018, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported that 569 people attempted dangerous boat trips to Southeast Asia and perished or disappeared at sea. By the end of 2023, 185,300 registered refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia belonged to 88 per cent of Burmese nationals, according to the organisation.
Of these, the Rohingya people numbered 107,670, who had their citizenship revoked by the military of Myanmar in the 1980s. After the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government three years ago, many more individuals fled to Malaysia as a result of the escalating civil conflict.
The absence of an asylum application processing system is a notable obstacle encountered by refugees residing in Malaysia. As a result, refugees are frequently viewed as undocumented immigrants who work in low-paying occupations, live in unstable conditions, and run the risk of being arrested.
Recent raids by Malaysia’s immigration authorities have stepped up efforts to root out unauthorised migrants. To confirm the status of refugees, the UNHCR has been unable to enter immigration detention facilities since August 2019.
A similar escape involving around 500 Rohingya immigrants, including children, from a temporary detention centre in Penang state, occurred in April 2022, and this episode is reminiscent of that event. Six people died while trying to cross a roadway, and rioting was also suspected in this occurrence.
The escape from the Bidor facility highlights the pressing need for all-encompassing measures to solve the situation of Malaysian refugees and the difficulties they encounter in the face of continuous crackdowns and restrictions on humanitarian access.