Stateless Bajau Family Questions Double Standards After Heritage Players Row

---

 


Rocked by the news of seven "heritage" players receiving citizenship, an indigenous Bajau family in Labuan questions their own stateless status.
Azwan (not his real name) and his siblings had their citizenship revoked due to irregularities in the registration of their birth certificates - much like the International Federation of Association Football’s (Fifa) findings regarding the football players.
But unlike them, Azwan and his siblings do not have citizenships in other countries to fall back on.
"We are not rich, we are ordinary people. You see the seven football players? We don't even know them, and suddenly they became Malaysian citizens. And then, suddenly (it was reported that) their documents were fabricated.
ADS"But us? We were born in Labuan, and we went to school in Labuan. But the treatment is like we're foreigners," he lamented to Malaysiakini.
Origin story
The issue originates from an agreement between Azwan's father and aunt.
When Azwan was about 14, his father made an arrangement with one of his cousins. She agreed to be put down as the mother on the birth certificates of his children in order for them to gain citizenship.
As a child, he was not privy to the details. Neither does he know what caused his aunt to suddenly lodge a police report in 2014 to say that she was not their birth mother.
His father had been dead for three years by that time, so Azwan and his siblings could not ask him about the arrangement.
Their real birth mother, a Filipino, is still alive, but until today, she insists that she knows none of the details.
Tale of two standards
The unfolding case of the seven football players has been raised in recent discussions regarding citizenship, with activists and stateless people seeing it as clear evidence of double standards.
In September, Fifa imposed a fine of 350,000 Swiss francs (RM1.9 million) on the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM), while the players - Gabriel Palmero, Facundo Garces, Rodrigo Holgado, Imanol Machuca, Joao Figueiredo, Jon Irazabal, and Hector Hevel - were each fined 2,000 Swiss francs.
Fifa also sanctioned FAM and the seven for breaches of Article 22 of the Fifa Disciplinary Code (FDC) on forgery and falsification.
ADSFAM appealed the decision, leading to the Fifa appeal committee deciding on Nov 17 to order a full investigation into FAM’s internal operations.
The committee's findings revealed a deliberate and coordinated scheme, including the alteration of players’ grandparents’ birth certificates, which FAM knowingly submitted to Fifa as authentic records.
‘Why are we punished?’
Azwan asked why he and his siblings had been punished while those behind the FAM controversy had gotten off scot free.
He said that his aunt's police report spurred an investigation into his and his siblings' national identity documents, leaving the four in a kind of citizenship limbo.
Malaysiakini wrote to the National Registration Department (NRD) for clarification, and the agency provided a reply stating that the siblings have no claim to Malaysian citizenship as per Part III of the Federal Constitution, based on its review of their documents and records.
The investigation into the matter had concluded in 2021, the NRD said.
This only raised more questions from Azwan.
"When the NRD in Labuan called my brother (to take his statement for the investigation) in August this year, they told him the same thing: it's still under investigation," he claimed.
Unable to go to school
The saddest part to Azwan is how the issue has impacted his young daughter's own status, leaving her unable to go to school.
His voice choked with tears, he said he cannot help but weep when he thinks about her situation - worse when confronted with her questions on whether she will be starting school soon.
"If you are a parent and your child asks you when she can go to school, how would you feel? I can tell you, I feel very sad. Without even realising it, tears fell from my eyes," he said.
He furnished Malaysiakini with his daughter's birth certificate as evidence. Despite being marked down as Bajau in the race column, the citizenship column says "belum ditentukan" (yet to be determined).
The Home Ministry recently announced that the children of Malaysian women married to foreign men will soon be automatically granted citizenship. However, Azwan's wife is not Malaysian.
Far-reaching impact
Beyond his own family, Azwan detailed how the issue impacted his siblings.
His sister, a divorcee, had relied on government aid to supplement the RM800 she received from her ex-husband to support her and their children.
The revocation of her citizenship caused her to become disqualified from receiving government aid. She now sells kuih to eke out a living, Azwan said.
He further claimed that one of his brothers had to stop working in the e-hailing industry as he could not register with the Land Public Transport Agency.
Desperate for solutions, Azwan resorted to writing a letter to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim over the matter.
"I think you can imagine our struggles and difficulties. It's very, very sad.
"I don't believe Malaysia is so cruel. I cannot blame Malaysia. But the NRD, does it not have humanity?" he asked.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are no exact numbers on the number of people afflicted with statelessness in East Malaysia.
"Contrary to the stateless populations in West Malaysia, the circumstances in East Malaysia, especially concerning the mixed migratory context in Sabah, are more difficult to establish, and efforts to operationalise a programme had been generally considered more complex," it said on its site.
This includes people from Bajau tribes, the children of Filipino and Indonesian migrants, street children or those in welfare homes, and nomadic indigenous people. - Mkini

---