COMMENT Malaysia has recently been condemned for human trafficking in a damning report by the United States government.

I am not going to argue here the pros and cons of the points raised by the report, especially as this document certainly has its merits (incidentally, Thailand, not Malaysia, has been singled out as the greatest culprit in the region). Instead, I prefer to concentrate on the actual lives of people who arrived here and are now struggling.

 

Kyaw (not his real name) is one of a dozen workers, practically all from Myanmar (there is one single Indonesian), who toil and live in a large restaurant where they do everything under the sun, from waiting on tables, to cooking, chopping vegetables, cleaning, doing the accounts, and so on and so forth.

 

For instance, the other night I noticed that they were struggling to set up an Astro antenna (they eventually managed it). They were at one point also charged with the task of breaking down a large partition wall so that two dining rooms could be joined together into a single large one.

 

Incidentally, they carried out both tasks after hours, even though their working schedules are punishing, to put it mildly. They also did other masonry work and laid out a couple of electrical extensions and cables.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a small fire occasioned by one of the cables that caused panic for a while in the restaurant. In this way, tasks that in many countries would require - also by law - a specialised technician are often carried out by Myanmar workers, even though, of course, they have not necessarily had any formal or other training.

 

Saw is an electrician, also from Myanmar. He lives with his boss, who also has another foreign worker from Myanmar, besides two Malaysian workers. He leaves home with his boss and the rest of the crew every morning at nine and gets back after 6pm. All workers live with their boss.

 

I walk past Saw's home a couple of times and notice that once he is feeding his boss's three dogs; another time, he is watering the plants. I guess that, had I had access to the house, I might have caught him one evening scouring the pans in the kitchen or mopping the floor.

 

It is hard to avoid the impression that Myanmar workers have become virtually indispensable. It is just not possible to exploit a local as ruthlessly as a Myanmar worker, whether or not he or she is illegal.

 

Even when they are legally in the country, Myo tells me, they are not treated in the same way as locals. Not only are their wages generally lower, but they are also charged with the dirtiest jobs. Myo is someone who has been working for an upmarket café for years now. He tells me that his Malaysian co-workers never do the heavy cleaning and garbage disposal. It is up to Myanmar workers to do it.

 

Myo does not keep his passport with him, as his boss's agent has it. If he wanted to keep his passport, he would have to pay hard cash.

 

Poverty and ethnic conflict

 

Kyaw, who is now a United Nations refugee, enlightens me as to why he left his poverty-stricken village in Rakhine state in Myanmar (reportedly one of the poorest states of a generally poor country). There was nothing there for him or any of his friends who also came down to Malaysia.

 

While he was growing up, he could not learn any English because his family could not even afford to send him to the local (bad) government school. There was not enough food in the house either. Therefore, he was taken on by the local monastery's monks, who both fed and instructed him.

 

What little he knows, he owes it to the monks. Unsurprisingly, he is very much influenced by local Buddhism like many of his countrymen, as the recent conflicts with the Rohingya in Rakhine state in particular have indicated again and again.

 

I am impressed by the mobility. People start out in fairly remote locations in Myanmar and then just move down to Malaysia via Thailand. They often follow the footsteps of friends, family, and neighbours, not to mention broader ethnic networks. One restaurant I know has many Myanmar workers, a majority of them from Rakhine state, whether or not they come from the same or neighbouring villages. Most did not necessarily know each other before arriving in Malaysia.

 

Needless to add, everyone concerned - both legal and illegal workers - have paid various sums of money to all kinds of intermediaries and agents, of various nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, all the way from their home villages to their destination in Malaysia via Thailand.

 

I do not believe Kyaw or Saw would be interested in the international debate about human trafficking even if they were aware of it (incidentally they are not, though of course the concurrent realities are well-known to both of them as they have experienced it in the flesh).

 

I have also talked to one illegal worker, Soe, who I used to see hanging around my home as it was near his job, and who has now disappeared (I hope nothing bad has happened to him and that he has just changed his job. Workers can be very mobile in Malaysia).

 

He was only 22 when we met, though he looked older than his age. His life was very much like that of his other Rakhine friends, namely, he had at best one day off a week, which he used to visit his mates and get drunk with them on very cheap whisky. He also visited the local red light district catering to foreign workers. If you are a foreign worker, it can be almost impossible to find a girlfriend as the sex ratio is very unbalanced.

 

I have no statistics to offer, but very impressionistically I could venture that eight out of every 10 Myanmar workers are male, often young men. Women are besides often married or have a companion. Therefore, not only are they very scarce but also usually unavailable as well. There are nonetheless some liaisons between Myanmar workers and local women.

 

Porous borders

 

Sometimes I am under the impression that Malaysians, unwittingly or not, are running a concentration camp for young men and women, faintly reminiscent of one of those colonial islands in the Western Indian Ocean (say, Mauritius) where most people used to be male slaves or indentured workers. The catch of course is that Peninsular Malaysia is no island and the exit gate is usually wide open.

 

On the other side, however there may be only a poor village pinned down somewhere on the long coast or the mountainous interior of Rakhine state, where not only are there no jobs but also people may have to struggle even to place a meal on their tables.

 

Soe - who once told me he dislikes his life in Malaysia because of the very long working hours - was actually afraid of being caught in an ‘operasi’ and sent back home to face a life of virtually no prospects, whereas in Malaysia at least he has the luxury of endless drudgery, in dead end menial jobs locals shun, punctuated by off days drenched in alcohol, friendship, and a little sex on the side.

 

Kyaw in fact complains that there is too little sex in his life, and he is therefore looking for a wife. The only problem is that there are no candidates available anywhere in sight. Unless he goes back to his village in Myanmar and can afford to marry (marriage can cost a good deal of money, I am told, to the point of being unaffordable to many young men), his predicament is unlikely to change any time soon.

 

Kyaw also enlightens me about how borders actually function in the region. He says you can literally walk into neighbouring Bangladesh from Rakhine state if you want. The paths are all well known to everybody and usually not guarded.

 

I muse that it is therefore no wonder that there is a large border population such as the Rohingya - reputedly one of the most persecuted groups of people in the world today - who neither Bangladesh nor Myanmar want to claim as their own. They are supposed to be foreigners to both countries that suddenly simply sprouted up from their common border.

 

Kyaw's opinion on the Rohingya is that they are welcome to stay in Rakhine state, even though it is, according to him, not their original homeland, provided that they behave themselves. Of course, Rakhines like himself often believe that their Rohingya neighbours do not behave properly.

 

Rape of Rakhine women is then invariably brought up in the conversation. It is also apposite to note here that both populations are equally deeply religious, indicating in this way that across the ethnic, language, and religious divide there is a greater degree of affinity than meets the eye.

 

Speaking good English

Kyaw is afraid of eventually going to the US, the major destination for United Nations refugees stranded in Malaysia. He stresses to me again and again that he knows no English. I promise to help. In fact, the one Rakhine worker - also a UN refugee - in the whole neighbourhood who speaks good English is well-known to all local Rakhines. He is practically a celebrity, in fact.

 

This is perhaps unsurprising, as so many workers do not even speak Malay well in my experience, let alone English (a couple in fact do not even speak Malay at all, and work therefore under the supervision of other Rakhine or Burmese workers).

 

Maung Zaw turns out to be a very intelligent and articulate man, who speaks very good English, and in fact does not in the least want to go to the US though he holds a UN refugee card. That is because he wants to be his own boss and start a business back home.

 

Borders are porous therefore and so are identities: a refugee who is not a refugee as he is serious about going back home to start his own business; a refugee who is one but is not keen on being one as he fears going to the US; aspirants to refugee status (I have met several) who are workers; workers who would not dream of becoming a refugee, but all the same dislike being workers in Malaysia; people (there are many) who dislike life in Malaysia and yet dread the prospect of going back home; and so on and so forth.

 

Kyaw is of great help here. He has set his priorities right: he wants to have a wife so as to have more sex; he desires to drink more often, I assume to escape the harsh realities of his life; and furthermore wants to learn English so as not to feel too intimidated by the prospect of his coming life in the US.

 

None of the above may necessarily be directly relevant to the on-going and no doubt vital debate on human trafficking; however, I personally find it a sobering thought to learn that trafficking is actually enmeshed with so many other very human issues.

 

Perhaps we could start by looking at why human territories have to be so strictly divided among nation states with clearly defined borders, when the inhabitants of the territories in question themselves are evidently migratory birds at the best of times. I am always reminded in this regard of the pathways mentioned by Kyaw above, linking Bangladesh to Rakhine state, through which people simply migrate either way regardless of border controls or passports.

 

There are even some of them, like the Rohingya, who do not seem to belong to either side of any known border. It is also a sobering piece of information that, while the Rohingya, at least according to some people, cannot stay in Rakhine state (nor anywhere else for that matter), as they are not supposed to belong there, Kyaw, who is officially very much an undisputedly local inhabitant who has therefore excellent claims to his country of birth, cannot stay there either.

 

He has in this way become a refugee, intriguingly, but perhaps not unsurprisingly, very much like many of his Rohingya (would-be) countrymen and women. It is also an equally steadying piece of information to remember that back in the colonial era, until the 1950s and 1960s, it was actually Malaysians who migrated to Myanmar in search of work, as the latter was unmistakably the richer country. 

 

FRED ROSEN has been gallivanting around South-East Asia for quite some time now. He is interested in foreign communities in Malaysia’s large cities. He has also been writing about Malacca, both in the present and the past, as well as other ancient port cities in the Indian Ocean.\