Sunday was World Refugee Day, a day spent taking stock of our global efforts to help refugees and asylum seekers.

It was not a day where refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia brought out cakes, streamers and played party songs. There were no kenduri or special prayers either.

It was a day, where they hoped with the sparse media attention, would open up greater space for them to live as dignified human beings.

At present, there are more than 400 refugees and asylum seekers detained in prisons and immigration detention centers here nationwide.

Whether Acehnese, Rohingya, Chin, or members of other ethnic groups, all of them have one thing in common: The prospect of being deported to their respective homelands scares them to death.

Simple concept

Over the years, many refugees, stateless people and asylum seekers have been deported. Those

who returned to Malaysia, spoke of the horrors they endured at home. Some, however, did not live to tell their tales.

Regardless of whether Malaysia has signed the Refugee Convention, it is still bound to respect the principle of non-refoulement. The concept is simple:

'No state is to return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his/her life or freedom would be threatened on account of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion'.

However, this is ignored despite the attempts by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to put a stop to such incidents.

Under the Malaysian system which does not recognise the fact that some refugees, such as the Acehnese and Rohingyas, cannot go home, these people are left with few options: to be deported en masse along with other 'illegal immigrants', to opt for 'voluntary deportation', or to wait for resettlement, organised by the UNHCR.

Unfortunately, the third and most palatable option, resettlement, is available to Acehnese only after months of detention, and is not available at all to most Rohingyas, because they are not processed for resettlement.

Thus, many detainees are likely to stay in detention camps indefinitely, until such time as they decide, of their own volition, to brave the consequences of being sent home.

Now that World Refugee Day 2004 has passed, let us not forget them and work together in order to find more humanitarian solutions to their predicament.

ALICE M NAH is the Refugee Affairs Coordinator at human rights organisation HAKAM.