Several years, I met a migrant worker from Vietnam by the name of Ah Siong (not his real name), who told me in fluent Malay how he had been cheated to work in Malaysia by a local official in his hometown and also by other agents.

“I had to work up to 12 hours a day, painting in different factories without any protective gear. For the first six months, the boss took all my salaries and said he had to pay back to the agents. Although he started paying me monthly after that, he would still deduct RM200 from my RM900 salary for medical or urgent needs.”

The appalling working conditions eventually caused him lung problems, and he wanted to go home. But his passport was being withheld by the employer who refused to return it to him unless he completed the five-year contract. He found the courage to seek help from the local police station, only to be warned that he would be arrested, detained or even caned if he did not stay with the employer but roamed around.

To save his own life, he paid a human smuggler to take him back to Vietnam. Once in his home town, he complained to the local official who had got him the job in Malaysia. Needless to say, the local official was upset that he did not complete the contract and got the police to bash him up.

Feeling bitter and wronged, Ah Siong became an activist and often protested against government injustices in the local areas. He was again threatened by the police and eventually fled to seek asylum in Bangkok, where we met.

“Although I went through much suffering and pain in Malaysia, I learned to speak Malay and became much more aware of human dignity and workers’ rights,” he told me firmly and with confidence.

Ah Siong was finally recognised as a refugee and resettled to a country where he now lives safely, freely and legally. I am hearted to know his misery in both Vietnam and Malaysia ended on a positive note.

To verify what he had told me, I googled and found a document by Amnesty International in March 2010, entitled Trapped: The Exploitation of Migrant Workers in Malaysia, in which some of the experiences  of the migrant workers resemble strongly those of Ah Siong, such as Vietnamese officials were directly involved in the recruitments of local workers to be sent to Malaysia, withholding of salaries and passports, as well as the lack of precautionary measures for workers.

Harassment, threats, physical abuses and bribery on the part of state agents such as the police and Ikatan Relawan Rakyat Malaysia (Rela) were rampant.

Harsh realities

These are the harsh realities confronting migrant workers in Malaysia. Still, they are widely perceived to be a threat to national security, public order and even the ‘established’ ethnic composition despite the immense contributions that they have made to the Malaysian economy, and urgings for their freedoms and rights to be curbed and tightly controlled are not uncommon.

Truth be told, migrant workers, documented and undocumented alike, are more often than not the victims rather than the perpetrators of crime. If the employer treats them well and pays them on time, thereby enabling them to send remittances back home on a regular basis, these guest workers will most likely refrain from illegal activities so as not to land themselves in trouble. It is just part of the human nature and one does not need rocket science to prove it.

I have met some of them who had been robed or attacked by local thugs yet dared not approach the police for help, fearing that they would instead be taken in and subjected to further abuse. Before 2010, Rela members were even empowered to verify migrant workers’ documents, which gave rise to series of human rights violations. Again, Malaysia became famous instantly for yet another wrong reason.

Day in day out, we read of sensationalising headlines such as ‘KLCC flooded by migrant workers’ or ‘Petaling Street is now a foreign enclave’. But the questions that nobody seems to be asking are: who is exploiting these workers? Why are they here in the first place? And who should replace them if the country decided that there were too many of them?

Would our pampered local youths be willing to take the 3D - dirty, difficult and dangerous - jobs and would the employers be happy to pay higher wages for that?

Parthiban Muniandy, a US-based researcher, talked to a high-ranking police officer regarding the ‘take-over’ of Petaling Street by migrant workers and the following is what transpired during the conversation as written in his book ‘Politics Of The Temporary: An Ethnography Of Migrant Life In Urban Malaysia’:

“Speaking about Chinatown in particular, he (the police officer) said that it was not exactly market competition that brought so many Bangladeshi and Burmese traders to Petaling Street.

“Many of the businesses that used to be there belonged to local Chinese business people, who realised that they could actually simply let these new migrants set up and sell their goods on what used to be predominantly Chinese-operated spaces of trade as long as the new traders paid the suppliers (Chinese business owners) their share of profits.

“Essentially, Han (the police officer) explained, the new traders were able to state their own price points for imitation, fake and pirated goods that could be marked up by 200 to 300 percent. And as long as they kept paying the minimum share of the goods suppliers, the traders stood to make large profits.

“On the part of the local business operators, they were able to vacate these old, polluted and basically undesirable areas and move to start businesses in better locations. This was the big reason why Chinatown had become more akin to a Little Dhaka, in terms of the predominance of Bangladeshi traders.”

And, from my own experience of talking to some vendors, a similar situation can be found in Kampung Baru and Chow Kit, where the local business owners would lease their stalls or shops to Malays from southern Thailand and Indonesians for a handsome profit.

Just look in the mirror

Now, you want to blame the migrant communities for turning various parts of KL into ‘foreign enclaves’? Just look into the mirror and see your ugly self. From Barisan Nasional to the private sector, the rent-seeking habit is hard to kick.

Mahathir Mohamad, in his zeal to make Malaysia a ‘developed’ nation, brought in the multinationals and foreign capital. But he did not want the Malays to work in factories as this would undermine his ‘mission’ to transform the Malay community; he also feared that having a sizeable Malay working class would pose serious political challenge to his rule.

As for the Chinese, they would rather be a white collar worker, small trader or professional. And as always, Umno cares nothing about the Orang Asli, the Indians and the bumiputra communities in Sabah and Sarawak. Hence, the number of migrant workers, mostly from Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Bangladesh and Vietnam, rose from 530,000 in 1993 to the staggering 1.6 million today, not counting the undocumented ones.

But we before we blame these workers for ‘diluting’ our national culture and ‘disrupting’ social order, can we ask ourselves honestly who is exploiting them in the first place?

It is therefore most irresponsible of Wee Ka Siong, the MCA deputy president, to suggest that Chinese Malaysians could one day be outnumbered by migrant workers, without actually providing an analysis on how the situation of today came about. His tactic is of course no different from that of Umno, as the only way for them to cling on to power is to play up fear and the race/religion card even at the expense of the vulnerable migrant workers!

Mahathir’s Wawasan gave people the false promise of a nationhood; many were (and still are) proud of his soulless monuments such as the Twin Towers and Putrajaya.

A woman refused to buy into the state propaganda. She most probably was convinced that if Malaysians were eager to partake in ‘Malaysian glories’, they ought also to be willing to shoulder the responsibility over Malaysian shames.

But when she tried to do just that by exposing the horrible conditions of migrant workers in detention centres, she was promptly charged in court with ‘maliciously publishing false news’ and found guilty. The head of the government at the time was none other than Mahathir, and her name is Irene Fernandez.

Today, Irene is with the Lord but her legacies live on. I only hope more Malaysians are willing to come forward and right the wrongs committed by other Malaysians, especially in regard to migrant workers, asylum-seekers and refugees.

Otherwise, forget about whatever Wawasan lah. It's all humbuggery anyway, so it would not be the last time that I heard of a tragic story like Ah Siong’s.

JOSH HONG studied politics at London Metropolitan University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A keen watcher of domestic and international politics, he longs for a day when Malaysians will learn and master the art of self-mockery, and enjoy life to the full in spite of politicians.