Filipino Refugees from Sabah: 
Trapped in an Endless Journey

Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in southern Philippines flock to nearby Sabah for a better life. Again and again, they are sent back to their land of birth. This ordeal became harshest last August and September when thousands of them – called undocumented aliens by Malaysian authorities – were forcibly sent home. But that is just part of a long journey that begins with abject poverty and war.

By Maita Santiago
People's Media Center Reports
Reposted by Bulatlat.com

Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in southern Philippines flock to nearby Sabah for a better life. Again and again, they are sent back to their land of birth. This ordeal became harshest last August and September when thousands of them – called undocumented aliens by Malaysian authorities – were forcibly sent home. But that is just part of a long journey that begins with abject poverty and war.

Uttoh Asman, 42, saw three of his 12 children die after he and his family were deported by Malaysian authorities last August.

After spending 13 years as a laborer in Sabah, Uttoh – together with his family - found himself rounded up one day in August by Malaysian police in a demolition operation. With their house gone, they spent the next 15 days inside one of Sabah’s detention centers described by many refugees as overcrowded and filthy. Several days later, Uttoh, his family and other refugees were sent home to Bongao, Tawi-Tawi in southern Philippines.

On Sept. 19, five of Uttoh’s children were taken to the Datu Halun Sakilan Memorial Hospital – Tawi Tawi’s provincial hospital in Bongao - because of respiratory ailment. At the hospital’s unfinished ward and inside a room swarming with flies and cushion-less metal hots, Uttoh took care of his children.

But by that time, however, the inhuman and brutal experience Uttoh’s family had undergone would exact its toll on the children. Three of them, ages 7, 5 and 3 died within one week of each other.

Uttoh relates in Filipino that aside from the other two who remain in the hospital, he has two more children at home who he fears may go blind because of measles-complication.

Earlier in August, Philippine media reported at least 13 children died in the detention centers and during the refugees’ journey back home.

According to Health Action for Human Rights doctors, epidemics of illnesses like those that infected the Asman children, are common during natural- and man-made disasters.

Brutal crackdown

As early as December last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammed’s government launched a brutal crackdown on what his authorities alleged as undocumented foreign workers. It was reported that some 500,000 Filipinos alone were working illegally in Sabah. Filipinos, along with thousands of Indonesians, received the harshest treatment under Mahathir’s “Operation Black Crow.” The crackdown sent some 84,000 Filipinos packing up for the boat ride back to the Philippines. Most of the deportees rejoined their relatives in Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Basilan and Zamboanga City.

”Operation Black Crow” became Malaysia’s blitzkrieg for implementing a more stringent immigration law in September. All alleged undocumented foreign workers were to be arrested, jailed for up to six months, forced to pay a US$2,500 fine aside from receiving six cane lashes.  

Nusia Jamaldi

Joining members of a fact-finding and medical mission from Sept. 22-29, this writer met Nusia Jamaldi in Sitangkai, Tawi-Tawi. Called the “Venice of the South,” Sitangkai can be reached some two hours away from Sabah by speedboat.

Indeed, there are no roads in Sitangkai: the entire community rises above the water and is dotted with huts joined together by footbridges. A small rowboat took us to this water community where Nusia and 10 other refugees live.

Originally from Rio Hondo in Zamboanga City, Nusia andher family moved to Sabah in 1992.

Spending all her life fishing and without any formal schooling, Nusia does not know how old she is.

However, her black hair and the wrinkles around her face show she is probably in her late 40s.

Nusia looks frail but she spoke loudly and was agitated when she began recounting the ordeal that her family and other Filipinos went into in a small water village in Sabah called Semporna.

A knock on the door of their house around 6 a.m. eight months ago changed their lives. As Nusia opened the door, policemen armed with rifles barged in and barked at her to leave. They were going to tear down her house. Before she could save all her belongings, chainsaws began whirring under her house. As her house’s wooden posts were cut, ropes were tied around the frame to a motorboat. All she could do was sit and watch her house go down into the water. Down into the water, she said later, also went the fondest memories of her life.

She and her relatives found themselves fleeing to a cemetery where they spent two days with barely any food. Then boarding small rowboats they began their trip back to Sitangkai. It took them the whole night and without food or water before they could reach their destination.

Pointing to a pile of belongings contained in straw bags in one corner of the room, she says that was all they were able to bring back.

Today, Nusia lives in a small hut made of coconut leaves and bamboo atop the water. After the interview, we walk shakily over pieces of wood that served as a footbridge to their hut.

Peering inside, she points to the gaping holes in the floor and describes how at one time, a young child fell through the hole.

Asked if there’s anything about Sabah she still recalls, she says she misses her own house. In Sitangkai, she shares the hut with more than 10 other people.

The Malaysian government crackdown on Filipinos received a heavy flak in the Philippines that some compatriots agitated for war in retaliation. A group of legislators moved for the revival of the Philippine claim to Sabah. Migrante International, on the other hand, called for a boycott of Malaysian products including its airline.

Kuala Lumpur authorities explained however that Philippine officials were given ample notice about Malaysia’s new immigration policy on undocumented nationals.

Further abuse

Meanwhile, criticized for its lack of proactive response to the refugees’ plight, the Macapagal-Arroyo government directed its officials to process the deportees’ passports and spend for their travel back to the Philippines.  Indeed, Philippine foreign affairs authorities put up a “one-stop shop” in Bongao where at least 519 refugees were given passports without charge last September. The passports were however stamped only with a 15-day tourist visa, leaving the refugees vulnerable to further abuse once their visas expire in Sabah.

Armed with passports, many deportees swarmed the immigration office in Tawi-Tawi as they prepared to board the next boat back to Sabah. Those who could not faced an uncertain future.

Whether government has prepared contingency measures to help the deportees rebuild their lives or build new homes remains a question.

Most refugees hail from Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi – far-flung provinces that are continually gripped by grinding poverty and war. Under these circumstances, carving out a new life looks dim. After nearly a decade in Sabah, many people like Uttoh and Nusia have returned to Mindanao only to find that the conditions that forced them to leave have hardly improved.

Such hardship beckons them to try their luck again in another land – perhaps back to Sabah or somewhere else. And unless Philippine authorities are able to address the abject conditions that drive Filipinos to lose hope in their homeland, the search for a better life will remain an endless journey. PMC Reports 

(Maita Santiago joined a Fact Finding, Relief and Medical Mission to Tawi-Tawi and Sulu last Sept. 22 to 29. Led by Task Force Tulong Sabah Refugees, the mission was initiated by various people’s organizations as a response to the forced exodus of Filipinos from Sabah.)

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