Parents who attend inquiries to verify the birth certificates of their children, whose births were registered late, have admitted to obtaining their own identity cards through one "Projek IC".

Magistrate Melissa Chia said this in Kota Kinabalu today, in her testimony before the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants in Sabah.

Chia said the parents said so in cases before her in Tawau and Semporna, when explaining why they could not produce their birth certificates to authenticate their own citizenships.

The 85th witness in the inquiry, Chia also recalled an incident where she had to be "smuggled out" of a briefing in Tanjung Labian, Lahad Datu, by the police.

This had to take place after the villagers present turned into an angry mob upon realising that she could not "rubber stamp" their birth certificates.

The magistrate said parents in cases she handled in Semporna and Tawau had openly admitted to receiving their ICs through "Projek IC", while working in timber camps.

"I asked them what they mean by Projek IC? On one or two occasions they said, 'Oh well, I was working in the timber camp and a group of people came and gave me a form to apply.

"'Thereafter, I got the blue IC.' This is all in the notes of proceedings (tendered as evidence to the RCI)," she said.

Chia had presided over cases involving people whose births or whose children's births were registered later than 42 days, requiring them to get a magistrate to endorse the birth certificates as authentic.

Interested to be Malaysians

The magistrate said that she also found cases where parents can present Malaysian identity cards but their children’s birth certificates state that the parents’ citizenship is “yet to be determined” or left blank.

“They tell me, ‘Actually I am not Malaysian but interested to be one so I was given an IC... and at the time of the child’s birth I had not gotten my IC yet’,” she said, adding that most were born in Indonesia or the Philippines,

She was, however, not asked when these people said they had received the ICs by such means.

She said that prior to 2009, before a directive was made by the Sabah and Sarawak chief justice, that such inquiries be held to authenticate late birth registrations, they were only “loosely” conducted.

This was despite the law requiring this having been in place since 1951.

She said the directive was made in 2008 to put in place “a filter to prevent illegal (migrants) from getting identity cards without proper process”.

Chia said that in cases which she had presided over, some told her that they obtained the identity cards despite not having their late registration birth certificates endorsed as the NRD was previously lax about such things.

Smuggled out in the back of a wagon

On the Tanjung Labian incident, she said that things got ugly midway through the briefing organised by the NRD which took place in a school.

“I didn’t quite understand their accent so at first (when half walked out of the classroom) I thought there was a theft and some sort of spot check.

“Then a man with a loudspeaker told them, ‘Don’t listen to her. She is not giving us what we are promised. We were told to come her to get our birth certificates stamped’,” she said.

“In the end the police started closing the gates and asked everyone to leave. They put me at the back of the wagon and hid me, while the police sat in the front seat until we drove out of the school before I was asked to sit upfront,” she said.

She said the police had advised her to do so for her safety and the safety of her staff who had accompanied her.

Later in the proceedings, Sabah native affairs department officer Norhayati Abdul Majid testified that there are cases where native courts have issued declarations that individuals were born in Sabah when they are not.

She also said that prior to 1982, the courts also issued certificates to prove someone is native, but most of those who received it were of Chinese heritage.

This included now-Kota Kinabalu parliamentarian Jimmy Wong, whom she said applied through proper means but whose claimed native heritage cannot be proven.

She said her department has passed the case to the native courts to decide whether to revoke the certificate.

The proceedings is adjourned until Monday to make way for Wesak Day tomorrow.