MANILA - Some 40,000 Filipinos deported from Sabah during a crackdown on illegal migrants have been issued proper passports and documents and can now return to the eastern Malaysian state without fear of being arrested, President Gloria Arroyo said today.

The mass deportations of Filipinos under allegedly dire conditions caused a diplomatic rift between the neighbors, with at least one girl complaining of being raped by Malaysian guards while in detention.

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad later declared a moratorium on the arrests and allowed Philippine investigators to check on the plight of the illegal migrants.

Arroyo said the moratorium has allowed Philippine authorities to put in place a system wherein the illegal migrants were properly documented.

"Because there is an ongoing moratorium, there are no new arrests. So what we're doing now is to focus on documentation of our Filipino brothers who want to return to Sabah and whose return is being sought by their employers in Sabah," Arroyo said.

"Perhaps, some 40,000 of them can now return to Sabah," she said in remarks during ceremonies at the presidential palace for relief assistance to the deportees.

Special task force

Arroyo meanwhile also issued a memorandum order creating a special task force to protect the rights of Filipino migrants in Sabah.

Upon the recommendation of the task force chief, Nur Jaafar, Arroyo said she would ask the Philippine navy to deploy a ship to be docked off the coast of Sabah to serve as a "processing center" for illegal Filipino migrants to secure official travel documents.

This would "facilitate our Filipino brothers to return to Sabah at the soonest possible time," Arroyo said. AFP