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Taylor’s Case Study: The State of Statelessness in Malaysia

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09 Oct 2020

4 Min Read

Dr Tamara Joan Duraisingam (Academic Columnist)

IN THIS ARTICLE

From the inability to travel around the world to people going into unemployment, COVID-19 has presented a lot of problems to many of us. However, a group of people have suffered a lot more and yet remain invisible in the eyes of the government — stateless people.

 

A stateless person is someone who has no nationality and is not tied to a country. According to the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are at least 10,000 stateless people in West Malaysia alone with unknown numbers in East Malaysia. Stateless people are denied basic rights like education, jobs, and even healthcare as they do not have any form of identification. So when a global emergency happens, like the COVID-19 pandemic, what happens to the stateless person?

 

Completing her Bachelors, Masters, and later PhD in Law, Dr Tamara Joan Duraisingam, Senior Lecturer from the Taylor's School of Law and Governance (Fomerly known as Taylor’s Law School), has dedicated most of her career researching statelessness, refugees, and migration in Malaysia. She shares with us her journey of going into this field of research and her expert opinion on how we can help our stateless brothers and sisters.

The Unseen Crisis: COVID-19 and the Stateless in Malaysia

Q: You’ve written many publications and papers related to statelessness, refugees, and migrations in Malaysia. What was your inspiration to research it?

 

A: The beginning seems rather frivolous now when I look back. I’d watched the movie *‘The Terminal’ which features Tom Hanks and thought about how interesting it was that people could lose recognition as a citizen of a state in just a blink of an eye! Then, I began my quest to understand what statelessness meant which unearthed a whole gamut of complex stories about statelessness in Malaysia. 

 

What seemed like harmless fun research to understand statelessness provided much meaning and purpose in my life. 

*The Terminal is an American comedy film based on a true story about an Eastern European man stuck in the John F. Kennedy Airport Terminal. He was denied entry into the United States due to his invalid passport while being unable to head back to his native country because of a civil war. 

 

Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the person who inspired the movie, ‘The Terminal’, lived in the Charles de Gaulle International terminal for 18 years because he had lost his papers stating that he was a refugee.

Q: How did your ‘harmless research’ expand to the magnitude of your research now?

 

A: What started off as an inquiry on the legal concepts featured in Hollywood production got me interested way back in 2008 to begin understanding the concept of statelessness. At that point of time, the concept was almost unheard of. 

 

Slowly but surely I completed my PhD study in the area of statelessness and helped raise awareness to the plight of stateless persons through talks with colleagues and students as well as through my writings in this area.    

 

 

Q: During our first MCO, there were a lot of news on refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia who were treated unfairly and they'd be one of the most exposed groups of people to COVID-19. Could you share your thoughts on this? 

 

A: During times of crisis, the last in the community will be pushed further back as citizenship comes to the forefront. The sad impact of COVID-19 is that it’s doubled for marginalised societies like the stateless. 

 

The problem is that there is no legal framework or machinery that provides some short relief for a stateless person in this country. Those who are also ‘illegal immigrants’ eventually get deported. Other stateless communities, such as refugees and undocumented persons, rely on international, regional organisations, NGOs, and civil society to assist them. 

 

Until there is a clear and feasible legal mechanism in place, it’s the responsibility of all citizens to assist in one way or another, as we're all human beings first, citizens second. If it were reversed, the focus wouldn't be on human rights but citizen rights.

landscape view of a homeless village
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