The earthen road is still muddy from the afternoon rain. It's dark to the left and to the right, and the mud - the area is a former swamp - is dangerous. A little further down the road lies a village, no more than sixty dwellings in all, but each housing four or five families. The houses, built of plywood, look like cardboard boxes. Seen from above they look like row after row of Supermi boxes. This is the village of Ampang Campuran, seven kilometers out of Kuala Lumpur, which houses around nine hundred people, almost all of them from East Java.
'I've been living here thirteen years', says father of two Zuhari, who comes from Lumajang. When he first arrived, Ampang was still jungle and swamp. The government allowed the immigrants to clear the area so that they could live there. After all, the government needed their labour for construction work. From 1983 until 1995, little by little, Zuhari and his friends built the village. Zuhari's home alone cost five thousand ringgit (AU$2500).
Leave
Nowadays though, the peace of Ampang Campuran has been disturbed. The Malaysian Government has given the land certificate for the area to a developer for building high class housing. 'We've been ordered to leave and given one thousand five hundred ringgit in compensation. How can we?', asks Zuhari. Nine Ampang residents have already been arrested because they refused to give up their land.
But the inhabitants of Ampang are lucky. At least they were able to bring their case to court. And in 1992 the judge ruled that the land should remain in a position of 'status quo'. However, part of the village was destroyed by fire in mid-1996, arousing suspicions that this was part of efforts to force the immigrants off the land, using tactics commonly applied in Jakarta. Other means include the denial of social services. The state electricity company is forbidden to provide electricity to Ampang, although cables run past just two hundred meters away. The postal service is not allowed to deliver letters there, even though the road names are clearly marked.
However, it is the construction workers who endure really bad living conditions. They usually live on site, with twenty or thirty of them squeezed into a tiny plywood building with no access to electricity or water, and no toilets or bathrooms.
'Land grabbers'
Housing for immigrants has become a real headache for the Malaysian Government. Around Kuala Lumpur alone around five hundred thousand people are occupying state land. The government calls them 'land grabbers'. In fact the land they occupy was originally unoccupied swamp land, only of interest to the government after it was made habitable by the immigrants.
'Malaysia cannot allow immigrants to occupy state land without permission when Malaysian citizens themselves have problems in getting land', says Anwar Ibrahim, the government leader tipped to replace Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
The problem is not just about the battle for land for housing though. There is also a clash of cultures. 'They have established a miniature Indonesian society, which is closed to us', says Hairi Abdullah, a lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology at the Malaysian National University. He blames the lack of assimilation on the fact that most immigrants have little education and work as manual labourers on plantations or construction sites. Hence, they are happier mixing with their fellow countrymen than interacting with Malaysian society.
Racist
Racist Malaysian intellectuals, like University of Malaya sociologist Azizah Kassim, assert that immigrants 'grab the social services that impoverished Malaysians are entitled to and create unnecessary competition for jobs'. He even goes so far as to blame them for 'the re-emergence of social ills previously eradicated in Malaysia, like baby abandonment, prostitution, begging and non-Islamic activities'. Yet Malaysian police statistics show that immigrants are responsible for only two percent of all crimes.
In short, as far as Kassim is concerned, the economic benefits Malaysia derives from its foreign workforce are outweighed by the negative consequences. He cites as an example the forty four thousand immigrant children that are schooled, ignoring the fact that they were born in Malaysia, have Malaysian birth certificates and have the right to schooling. Their schooling costs are higher too - they have to buy their books, for example, whereas Malaysian children may borrow them from school.
Children
More unfortunate are children born outside Malaysia who enter the country with their parents. According to data held by the welfare organisation PKAI, ten thousand are currently being denied entry to Malaysian schools. Indonesian schools only cater for the children of embassy officials. 'The children of immigrants really suffer', says Khairuddin Harahap. He argues that the two governments must try to resolve this issue. PKAI has already sent a report on it to the Department of Education and Culture in Jakarta, although there has yet to be a response.
This problem will only become more urgent given the number of Indonesians who want to stay in Malaysia. According to a survey carried out by a lecturer at the University of Malaya, 75% of Indonesians intend to stay permanently in Malaysia, despite occupying the lowest stratum of society. The alternative - living in Indonesia - is simply not economically viable.
With no legal protection, their suffering looks set to grow. Especially given the increasingly racist attitude of influential Malaysians. 'Foreign citizens who have ID cards are far too shrill and uncivilized in demanding their rights. It's as if they think they deserve to be Malaysians', said Basrul Hisham Abdul Aziz, an official of the government coalition Barisan Nasional, in an April 1996 edition of Utusan Melayu.
Does the Indonesian government intend to allow its people, who have already failed in their homeland, to be discarded by Malaysia? Let's hope not.
SUARA INDEPENDEN is an Indonesian dissident periodical
published by MIPPA, Indonesian Supporters of an Alternative
Press. It was started by the Alliance of Independent Journalists
(AJI) after the government closed three popular news weeklies in
June 1994. Three of its staff have been jailed in the past. Its
business manager, Andi Syahputra, is currently facing charges of
insulting the President. Five thousand copies of the magazine
were confiscated at the time of his arrest last year.
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