In Malaysia, ‘veteran journalist’ is an oft-abused phrase, which would include Kadir Jasin, a chief propagandist beholden to Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

And because our professional journalistic standards are so terribly low, anyone who has worked in the ‘mainstream’ media for a certain number of years can easily qualify as a ‘senior/veteran journalist’, or even ‘media professional’.

Take Tay Tian Yan of Sin Chew Daily for instance, who has been mercilessly derided by netizens over his utter failure to analyse important public issues in greater depth. Worse, he was once allegedly caught recycling an online joke to make it seem as his own work.

And then there is Wong Chun Wai of The Star who, despite having no clue about the complexities of the refugee issue, cared to pen a ‘passionate’ piece urging the government not to shelter the boat people from Myanmar and Bangladesh who had been left adrift at sea in recent days.

And Wong, as we all know, has been portraying himself as the ‘poster boy’ for the Voice of Moderates movement.

Anyway, what I am going to write next will certainly not endear myself to the readers, although it is about an issue that concerns life and humanity. Umbrage and irrational rants are expected, and I will take them in stride.

First, let me tell you a tale about my own family. My grandfather came from China to the then British Malaya for economic reasons and settled down in Malacca in the 1920s. My grandmother followed a few years later. Life became tough during the Great Depression of the 1930s, so he sent grandma and my Malacca-born father back to Hainan Island.

As the Sino-Japanese War escalated and engulfed even southern China, grandpa paid a human smuggler (or ‘snakehead’ as popularly known these days) to bring grandma and dad back to Malaya to save their lives. I remember dad used to tell me how he and other kids had to fight for rotten rice aboard the ship that was infested with rats and bugs. Had they not survived the treacherous ocean passage, I would not have been born, let alone be writing this article.

Hence, while the initial voyage was for economic purposes, my grandma’s second attempt to reach Malaya was for an entire different reason: fleeing war and potential persecution. Although Malaya, too, fell to the Japanese subsequently, that is another story.

Seen in this light, one ought to understand the feature of mixed movements in the global migration phenomenon. Even when you take a flight, passengers are invariably made up of tourists, businesspeople, migrant workers, students and, yes, asylum-seekers and refugees.

The same goes with boat trips. A crucial reason why the UN Refugee Agency and NGOs such as Tenaganita and the Migration Working Group had urged the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand to allow the boats to come ashore was because lives were at risk. Typically, illegal boats are nothing more than ill-equipped trawlers, overcrowded and barely seaworthy. Once they enter Malaysian waters, it is our moral duty to reach out to them.

I am therefore appalled at the xenophobic and inhumane remarks by the Malaysian public with regards to the boat arrivals. Granted, there are bound to be undocumented migrants from Bangladesh seeking employment in Malaysia, but the very same boat also carries Rohingya refugees who are fleeing persecution at home.

Akin to a death sentence

The undocumented migrants can be returned safely to where they came from, the same however cannot be said of the Rohingya, for deporting them back to northern Rakhine state of Myanmar, where anti-Rohingya sentiment remains strong and violence rampant, is akin to issuing them with a death sentence.

Simply put, I cannot turn my eyes away from their plight knowing that had the British colonial authorities refused entry to the boat that carried my grandma and dad in the late 1930s, they probably wouldn’t have survived, having perished either at sea or met their death during war in China.

Accepting the boat people ashore does not mean that they would be allowed to roam around the country. The government has now done the right thing by offering them temporary shelter - hopefully not in an immigration detention centre for the conditions there are awful - while UNHCR may go and ascertain as to who is a refugee and who is not.

Undocumented migrants should not be entitled to refugee status but sent home, with the assistance of the foreign mission of their country of origin.

As for the Rohingya refugees, it is the duty of the Malaysian government, UNHCR, NGOs and resettlement countries to look into a durable solution for them, although speedy resettlement can prove challenging .

For those who still do not understand the difference between refugees and migrant workers, this piece of information may be useful.

I have always been an advocate for democratic change in Malaysia, and do not see eye to eye with Umno on practically every issue. Still, I am not hesitant to applaud the government for now doing everything possible to ensure no lives are lost at sea.

The Rohingya refugees are not too dissimilar from those who sailed all the way from China, India or even Sulawesi just to seek refuge in Malaya before 1957. Their stories are not very different from those of other refugees before this. Even Jesus was a refugee before he became known as the Son of God according to the Bible, so how can we as fellow human beings turn our back on the very people that need protection from threat to life?

I don’t know how Wong Chun Wai’s forefathers ended up in Penang, but I will never allow myself to forget the simple fact that I, too, am a descendant of boat people. If a ‘moderate’ like him can be so heartless as to see the boat people drown, I am relieved to know I am a radical.

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.