Lawyers For Liberty (LFL) refers to Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh’s comment on 10 October in which she lauded Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail for being better than his predecessors in addressing the issues of citizenship and the stateless.
It is shocking and embarrassing that Yeoh has come out to say this amid an international scandal which highlights the unjust and preferential treatment the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) and the National Registration Department (“NRD”) has meted out in dealing with citizenship and stateless persons.
The minister’s tone-deaf statement does nothing to assuage public discontent and anger against the government over the grant of citizenship to the seven football players with heritage claims, which were found by Fifa to be false.
Netizens were right to dig up Yeoh’s statement in 2022 when she was still in opposition, where she criticised the then government over the preferential treatment of granting citizenship to football players over stateless individuals.
This is exactly what is happening under the current “Madani” (trustworthy) government of which Yeoh is a part of right now. The double standards and hypocrisy are clear for all to see.
- Sign up for Aliran's free daily email updates or weekly newsletters or both
- Make a one-off donation to Persatuan Aliran Kesedaran Negara (ALIRAN), Maybank a/c 507246118995 or CIMB a/c 8004240948
- Make a pledge or schedule an auto donation to Aliran every month or every quarter
- Become an Aliran member
Failure to address this clearly and opting instead to sing praises to Madani and Saifuddin Nasution shows how Hannah and her cabinet colleagues have put aside principles for political expediency.
In other words, it is blatantly clear that they used groups like the stateless as props for political mileage when in opposition for political gain. Now in government, Yeoh brazenly sings a different tune.
To make things worse, Hannah has the audacity to laud the citizenship amendments for “empowering Malaysian mothers”.
In fact, that amendment was a fraud upon Malaysian mothers who were denied citizenship for their children on the grounds they were born abroad.
This is because the amendments left out children born prior to the passing of the amendments. The amendment was useless to mothers with existing children who had campaigned so hard for a change in the law. It is shameful of Yeoh to laud those amendments.
It is simply outrageous for Yeoh to claim that Saifuddin had treated citizenship matters with “compassion and efficiency”.
It is public record that the MoHA under Saifuddin attempted to pass the most regressive amendments to the Constitution that would have made worse the problem of statelessness in Malaysia. He tried to remove Section 1(e), Part II of the second schedule of the Federal Constitution, which was the clause that enabled stateless Malaysians to get citizenship as of right.
The amendments were only abandoned after fierce opposition by civil society and the public.
Yeoh simply pretends none of this ever happened, in her zeal to defend the Madani government and Saifuddin.
Yeoh also praised Saifuddin for purportedly clearing 49,000 backlogged cases of citizenship applications. However, she stopped short of saying how many qualified stateless persons still remain without citizenship.
The number of backlogged applications cleared does not reflect the large numbers of desperate people out there who remain stateless, including thousands of school-going children.
Why has the standard operation procedure for the NRD not been amended or made consistent with the Constitution and the landmark judgments of former Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat on citizenship? As a result, new cases of statelessness are being created even as Yeoh claims the backlog is being cleared.
It is important to remember that many of those who became stateless did so due to the failure of the NRD and the MoHA to recognise their Malaysian citizenship under the Constitution. In other words, citing the number of cleared backlogged applications is meaningless.
The only ‘compassion’ and ‘efficiency’, as claimed by Yeoh, that the public can see by Saifuddin Nasution seems to be reserved for the seven football players. The NRD issued birth certificates even though they could not find the original records of their grandparents’ birth.
The home minister bent over backwards to the point where he waved away the mandatory residence period required under the Federal Constitution, an act that is unlawful and unconstitutional.
The fact is that stateless children are still being deprived of their rights to education, healthcare and any hope of a better future. The preferential and unjust treatment that Hannah highlighted in her old social media post is still happening. As a member of this government, it is her responsibility to resolve it, and not defend the indefensible in a knee-jerk manner. – LFL
Zaid Malek is the director of Lawyers For Liberty.
AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme
