Malaysia May Further Extend Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants After Quake

Agence France Presse
Friday, January 7, 2005

Malaysia may again extend an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to let Indonesia focus on rehabilitating its tsunami-hit Aceh province, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.

The amnesty was orginally due to expire December 31 but Malaysia last week extended it for a month amid fears mass deportations would worsen the humanitarian crisis in Indonesia and other countries hit by the December 26 earthquake and giant waves.

Abdullah, who met Wednesday with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta on the eve of an emergency meeting of world leaders to rally aid for tsunami victims, said he had offered to extend the amnesty for a second time if necessary.

"I told him that if it became again very necessary for us to delay some more, then we will do that," Abdullah said in an interview with BBC Asia Today in Jakarta.

"Our priority is that we would like President Susilo and his government to concentrate on rehabilitating Aceh and the Acehnese. There has to be a lot of things done."

Indonesians make up the bulk of more than a million illegal workers in Malaysia, many of them from Aceh which bore the brunt of the tsunamis which had killed more than 153,000 people in Asia, most of them in Indonesia, and left million homeless.

Nationals from tsunami-hit India and Sri Lanka also work illegally in Malaysia, drawn by jobs in the construction, plantation and service industries.

More than 300,000 migrants, including some 270,000 from Indonesia, had already left Malaysia since the amnesty began October 29, immigration officials said.

Abdullah also said he had reiterated to the Indonesian president his promise to drum up support among the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) nations to fund a project to protect more than 30,000 children orphaned in the tsunami disaster.

He supported Indonesia's move this week to ban the adoption of children in Aceh amid fears they could be preyed on by human traffickers, he said.

Malaysia chairs the 57-member OIC and the 117-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). It will appeal to both organisations to contribute more to relief funds, Abdullah said.

Malaysia, where 68 people were killed in the massive waves last month, has already donated 5.3 million dollars to Indonesia's tsunami fund.

Abdullah was due to visit Aceh Friday before returning to Kuala Lumpur.