Refugees from reality

I’m constantly amazed and appalled at how many people are happy to abandon their humanity in the face of inconvenient or unpalatable reality and seek refuge in ignorance, denial or delusion.

Like the 75 percent of 769 respondents to a recent survey by Star who expressed the opinion that maids should not be given a day off every week.

But of course not all Malaysians should be judged by this contemptible majority. Tireless campaigner for migrant labour rights, Irene Fernandez, no doubt spoke for a great many when, as reported in Malaysiakini , she said she was “shocked at how inhuman we have become that we don’t recognise them as human beings and that they need their day off”.

Many Malaysians are also only too aware of the fact that, as Fernandez added, “the government has been supporting the employers and allowing them to use domestic workers however they wish”.

And this disgraceful state of affairs is nothing new. As we’ve been reminded by Migrant Care, an organisation for Indonesian migrant labour rights whose statement on the issue was quoted in another Malaysiakini article, the Malaysian Employment Act 1961 mandates a weekly day off for domestic workers.

Only now, after 48 years and an Indonesian threat of refusal to permit its citizens to seek domestic employment in Malaysia - following some especially atrocious instances of criminal abuse of maids - has the Barisan Nasional (BN) government been spurred into action.

Or at least a semblance or pretense of action, with Human Resources Minister S Subramaniam conceding to Malaysiakini that domestic workers’ right to a weekly day off has always been specified in the Employment Act, but explaining that its application to maids “was delayed for a while so we decided to add that (clause) in when drafting new regulations”.

Fantastic! What a classic example of how the BN government has spent the past 50 years constructing a fool’s paradise for its more self-interested and suggestible citizens, far from the harsh realities of civilised life like civil rights, equality and justice.

And what testament to the efficacy of Star and all the other organs of the BN-owned and/or dominated media in encouraging these dupes’ blissfully ignorant belief in official fantasies and fairytales.

World watching BN

Small wonder that 75 percent of respondents to that survey find themselves so remote from reality that they consider themselves somehow specially entitled to mercilessly exploit their fellow human beings as domestic slaves.

Or, in the case of refugees and undocumented immigrants, so many warm bodies just begging to be used, abused, bought and sold.

But thankfully there are many Malaysians, and more of them every day if voting trends are any indication, who refuse to exile themselves in BN’s country of the blind, where the one-eyed man (or rather the close-one-eye man) is king.

There’s also a big, wide world out there with no interest, vested or otherwise, in leaving BN and its true believers to live in peace in the cosy refuge from reality they’ve so corruptly constructed for themselves.

And this has been a great week for those of us who love to see BN and its cronies, supporters and sympathisers forced to face some major home truths.

First, the fact that the government of Indonesia is no longer content to stand by and see its citizens cheated and mistreated by predatory Malaysian agents and employers.

Second came the warning from the UN’s International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (ICC) that the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) will be downgraded to the ‘B’ tier – or what one Suhakam commissioner called the “outcast” status - unless specific amendments are made to the Human Rights Commission Act of Malaysia 1999 by October.

This threat follows a review of Malaysia last September by the UN Human Rights Council. Since since then, according to a Malaysiakini article, the council has made recommendations including the rescinding of the Internal Security Act (ISA), the release or trial of all those currently detained under the ISA, the disbanding of the vigilante force Rela and the ratification of a whole raft of “core human rights treaties”.

But I doubt we should hold our breath waiting for all this to happen. The article quoted an outgoing Suhakam commissioner as saying: “The government is not serious about human rights issues and....not interested in any legislation which will threaten the ruling party’s hold on power.”

Nor is the government too fussed about the company it keeps, apparently, as immediately following the UN threat to downgrade its rating on human rights came the US State Department’s ‘Trafficking in Persons Report 2009'.

Of the 173 countries surveyed, Malaysia was ranked in the last 17 along with such autocracies, kleptocracies and outlaw states as Burma, Chad, Cuba, Eritrea, Fiji, Iran, Kuwait, Mauritania, Niger, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria and Zimbabwe.

The report stated that “Malaysia is a destination, and, to a lesser extent, a source and transit country for women and children trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation, and for men, women and children trafficked for the purpose of forced labour”.

The findings also referred to a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report released in April alleging that Malaysian immigration officials sold refugees for US$200 per person to traffickers operating on the Thai border, and extorted ransoms of US$575 from adult refugees in return for their freedom.

This damning indictment concluded with the observation that, while the Malaysian prime minister had claimed that these allegations are being investigated, “no officials were arrested, prosecuted or convicted for involvement in trafficking during the reporting period”.

Such resolute resistance to reform is so typical of the BN regime that its members, cronies and supporters look more like refugees from reality every day. Which is absolutely fine by me.

The faster they run from reality, the closer they get to their moment of truth, and to the justice they’ve so long denied other people, Malaysians and foreigners alike.