I refer to the malaysiakini report Suhakam: Rela still needed .

I am indeed very surprised over the position taken by Suhakam in defending Rela and its current role in arresting migrants. Commissioner Siva Subramanian contradicts himself. On one hand, he says he does not support the Emergency laws and in the same breath he supports a body called Rela that was constituted through the Emergency laws.

If the Emergency laws are bad, then any mechanism that is created from unjust laws with powers from these laws cannot be accepted, particularly from a human rights perspective.

Commissioner Siva has failed to address the causes for the increase in undocumented migrants. In fact, in many of the cases the migrants are legal. They are arrested because they do not produce their passports. Their passports are with their employers or the recruiting agencies. There are cases where the employers have failed to renew their work permits.

Then there are thousands who have been trafficked into the country but have been arrested because they do not have their documents. Obviously, the documents are held by the traffickers. Then there are over 60,000 refugees who are not illegals but forced to flee their country out of persecution. We have also thousands of workers who have fled their exploitative and abusive employers. This form of list can go on.

But what it tells us is that these groups of migrants are not responsible for their undocumented status in the country or for not holding their passports with them. Yet, they are arrested and detained, sometimes even violently abused. In short, the rights of these migrant workers and refugees are violated.

Suhakam cannot hold such a narrow perspective on the role of Rela. It must contextualise the discourse on the impact, implications and the consequences on the rights of migrants and refugees. The use of Rela with the payment of RM80 for every migrant head hunted and arrested, only puts the migrant as a target. Commissioner Siva seems to place the so-called illegals as criminals.

There is no illegal human being in the world. What we have with us are persons with no proper documents to give them a status for stay in the country. The detention is therefore an administrative one - not criminal in nature. Yet the migrant is treated as a criminal. This form of treatment in itself is a violation of rights.

The use of Rela cannot be justified. If we need to beef up the enforcement agencies, then let us do so. We definitely need professionalism, particularly when a person's liberty and freedom is at stake. But most of all, we must address the root causes for the increase of undocumented persons in the country. Arresting innocent and the vulnerable persons is not the solution but a gross violation of rights.

The writer is director, Tenaganita .