The weathered blue door swung open to reveal a small room bare of all furniture safe for an old red rug. Although it was noontime, the room was lit by the single flourescent tube hanging from the rusty zinc roof above.

Tacked up on one smudged wall was a laminated press cutting dating back to over a year ago. In the photograph accompanying the report, a group of Burmese Rohingya asylum seekers were seen staring out from the fenced compound of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Kuala Lumpur with desperation etched on their faces.

But a year and a half later, one of the men in the picture, Zainal Abidin Jalaluddin, appeared to be in quite a different mood. The 33-year-old Rohingya and his family were scheduled to depart the following morning for New Zealand to begin new lives as resettled refugees.

With excitement, Zainal pulled out a photocopied brochure from his back pocket. On the worn-out cover was the greeting Haere Mai or 'welcome' in Maori.

"We will stay here for six weeks before we get our own house," he said pointing to a black-and-white picture of a longhouse at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre in Auckland.

"There will be meetings every morning and we will go for classes with other families. They will tell us about life there."

The booklet noted that refugees would be provided with various other forms of assistance including used clothing, medical services, food, and the services of interpreters, if so required.

A stipend may also be forthcoming but Zainal was uncertain. He then flipped to a page with a picture of a modest single-storey house.

"We will get a house that looks like this. I can study English for a year. Then, I have to get a job and take care of my family," he said, beaming.

"We will always be thankful. We don't have to worry about being arrested any longer. We won't have to worry about being sent back to Burma," added Zainal, who has three children aged one to five.

Resettlement activity

Zainal's family were among the more fortunate refugees who had been accepted for resettlement in various Western countries after living for years as undocumented immigrants in Malaysia.

Of the thousands of asylum seekers who approached the UNHCR in Kuala Lumpur, the majority claimed to have fled either state-sponsored prosecution in Burma or armed conflict in Indonesia's northwestern province of Aceh.

As a result of the worsening security situation in both areas, the UNHCR had been facing increasing pressure to find durable solutions to the refugee problem in Malaysia.

One area of increasing activity at the agency is in its resettlements department. According to UNHCR statistics, 31 refugees were resettled in third countries in 2000. This number rose to 79 in 2001 and 102 in 2002. This year, the agency was expecting around 500 to 600 places to be allocated for refugees who were in Malaysia.

Still, this was unlikely to provide relief for all the refugees recognised at the Kuala Lumpur office. While the number of resettlement places had increased, the number of people who had applied for protection also multiplied.

In the first six months of this year alone, more than 5,000 individuals had registered for asylum. If this trend continued, less than five percent of all applicants for the year will end up with the chance to start new lives abroad.

A predicament

"We have to stress that resettlement is an exceptional solution only for a small percentage of refugees. It is not an automatic right and it is not an option available to all refugees," said UNHCR resettlement consultant Margo Rayment who heads the newly set up resettlement team at the Kuala Lumpur office.

At the moment, Rayment (left in photo) was able to count 11 countries on her list among those willing to accept refugees from this region. These are Denmark, Norway, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, and a newly added participant - Brazil.

"Each of these countries have quotas of their own. They allocate certain number of spots to refugees from various regions. We work with Geneva to identify the most needy and vulnerable cases," she explained.

With these limitations in mind, Reyment said the UNHCR constantly sought to promote two other options, where possible. One was for voluntary repatriation of refugees and the other for local integration.

"Voluntary repatriation is not always viable. For instance, it is at present not an option for the Acehnese to return to Indonesia. So we have to work alongside the (Malaysian) authorities to find another solution."

At the very least, Rayment said all states should respect the legal and physical rights of asylum seekers and refugees under international law. "This would refer to their rights not to be detained and deported," she added.

And here was the problem. Malaysian law does not recognise the unique status of political refugees. Anyone without a valid visa was considered an 'illegal immigrant'.

They could be arrested and charged for violation of immigration law and if found guilty, they could be sentenced to a jail term and mandatory whipping.

The law also provided for the 'illegals' to be deported (after a spell in detention camps) but not released to live temporarily in Malaysia until the situation in their home countries improve.

Early release

This has indeed been the predicament facing another group of Burmese and Acehnese refugees. Until Aug 8, the 38 men had to spend the last few months - some up to a year - languishing in the Semenyih detention camp.

The UNHCR was able to persuade the authorities not to deport these refugees back to where their lives and freedoms were threatened, but was less successful in securing their early release from detention.

Indeed, the green light for the release came only after the entire group was accepted for resettlement in Denmark by the Danish Refugee Council and confirmed to depart Malaysia by Aug 25.

As the bus ferrying the refugees from Semenyih finally arrived at the UNHCR - more than 24 hours later than originally anticipated - wives and children gathered at the porch of the main building anxious to welcome their loved ones.

Reunited with their families and accepting their gifts of new shoes, clothing and backpacks from the Danish Refugee Council and two local donors later, the group of refugees appeared happy and relieved.

But even with only a few days left for their departure from Malaysia, they still had to live in fear of being re-arrested.

"Stay away from areas where there are a lot of police officers. We are going to give you some money for your use until you leave for Denmark so please do not work. If anything happens to you, call us immediately," cautioned an UNHCR officer.

"It has taken a while for us to get you all out but we hope in future, we will be able to bring other refugees out sooner," she added.

Hopeful future

Standing quietly by with their translator were four Burmese Chin refugees. They would be among the first Chin refugees from Malaysia to be resettled in Denmark.

The four men said they were wanted by the Rangoon junta, allegedly for involvement in the Chin National Front (CNF), a separatist minority group fighting for an independent state in northeastern Burma.

However, they said they were simply villagers caught in a battle between the government forces and CNF fighters.

"We supported the CNF but we were not soldiers. The government wanted to arrest us so we ran away from our villages. If (Burmese opposition leader) Aung San Suu Kyi can be detained what about ordinary people like us?"

Pondering their new lives ahead, the four bachelors looked somewhat apprehensive and lost. But as the thought occurred to them that they would at least have each other, they broke into wide hopeful smiles.