An Al Jazeera journalist is set to reveal ‘horrendous’ conditions and mistreatment of refugees by local authorities.
The 101 East programme entitled “Malaysia’s Unwanted” also claims that UNHCR staff, who were supposed to help refugees in Malaysia, were involved in corrupt dealings.
The news report shows Al Jazeera’s senior presenter and reporter Steve Chao posing as a priest in order to unearth depressing stories of trapped refugees after his many requests to enter these facilities as a journalist were declined. The documentary will air at 6.30am tomorrow.
The documentary shows Chao meeting chained and handcuffed refugees, some left without food for days. Some were left in overcrowded cells while children and new mothers were found ‘detained’.
A former detainee from Myanmar recalled how he had been beaten by a steep pole. “The hardest thing I faced in jail was being forced to take my clothes off and then being beaten, slapped and kicked in front of others.”
Head of the UNHCR mission Richard Towle said: “We’re like an accident and emergency hospital, not a general hospital. In an accident and emergency hospital you make tough decisions all the time about triaging and prioritising who is the neediest of the people in an already needy group of people.”
Malaysia has one of the world’s largest urban populations of refugees and asylum seekers with approximately 150,000.
Chao also discovers an illegal trade in UNHCR registration cards said to be perpetrated by local UNHCR representatives. A UN translator told Al Jazeera: “All the money from this activity goes into the pockets of some top guys in the UN.…We have been doing this with him for a long time. We are thieves, and we look for thieves above us.”
To watch the program online after broadcast, go here.
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