Suhakam slams cops over ‘mistaken identity’ case

Rahmah Ghazali | Sep 10, 08 5:14pm

The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) today took the police to task over the way it handled the case of a 22-year-old Malaysian suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

Suhakam commissioner N Siva Subramaniam said M Rajeshvari should have been given the time to explain herself.

He also criticised the police on the way it handles cases relating to illegal immigrants, saying that the police should listen to what these people have to say and not just ‘tangkap muat‘ them.

Siva was responding to a report in the Star yesterday which stated that Rajeshvari was held at the Lenggeng immigration depot for nine months for not having proper identification and for failing to recollect her identity card number.

She was arrested during a police raid at a coffee shop in Kuala Lumpur last October. Since she was not fluent in Bahasa Malaysia, the authorities suspected her of being a Sri Lankan.

She was then sent to the Kajang prison for two months before being transferred to the immigration depot.

Rajeshvari, who was six months pregnant at the time of her arrest, later gave birth to a boy while in detention.

She was finally released last Friday following the intervention of an non-governmental organisation, the Malaysian Indian Youth council.

According to Siva, the police should have given her at least a few days to explain herself.

“She might have forgotten (her IC number) especially when she was forced to do so (during the raid),” he told a press conference at the Suhakam headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

The commissioner said the police suspected that Rajeshvari was a Sri Lankan when she also failed to clarify her house address as she was staying in a squatter area where no house numbers are available.

“She had told the police and the National Registration Department (JPN) where she lived, but they insisted that she was a Sri Lankan. This shows that if your house is only a few kilometres away, they would still come and arrest you.

“If she (Rajeshvari) was not found by the NGO, she might have been deported (to Sri Lanka),” he added.

Not the first case

Meanwhile, the commissioner also stated that Rajeshvari’s case was not the first one, as there have been several mistaken identity cases in the country.

Having visited two immigrant depots in Menggatal and Sandakan in Sabah last week, Siva said there was a detainee who claimed to be Malaysian and owned an IC but was arrested by the authorities without any further investigation.

He said children between 12 and 17 years of age were also detained for failing to show their identification documents.

“They claimed they were born in Sabah and their parents were Malaysians. Despite all that, they were still arrested,” said Siva.

Calling for a more strict system to be imposed to identify illegal immigrants, Siva said ‘thumb print identification’ could always come in handy.

“If the IC number cannot be used at that particular time, using the thumb print for identification could always work. Why isn’t the system working now?” he asked.

Siva also noted that magistrates were not fully educated in handling such cases.

“These (alleged) illegal immigrants should have been at least granted bail to provide their documents, say for a month or a week, not after eleven months,” he said.

Siva said Suhakam will submit its findings to the police, NRD and the Immigration Department.

“We intend to speak to these agencies and they must come up with an assurance that we will not face the same situation anymore,” he added.

source:Malaysiakini