Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad says Malaysia must take in the Rohingya and Bangladeshi boat migrants, and give them humanitarian assistance. “Why can’t Myanmar accept them? Because they (Rohingya) are Muslims? They have been in the country for a long time,” he has said at a book launch in mid-May.
He was reported as stating that religion should not be an issue and that the Buddhists in the country should not simply “expel” the Rohingyas just because they practise a different religion.
One wonders if Mahathir has mellowed since his retirement or if he is just not as firm in his stand on race now. In the late 1970s, he wanted to “shoo” the Vietnamese boat people because they were of Chinese origins.
When the Vietnamese boat people came in droves to our shores to seek asylum, Mahathir the then deputy prime minister was reported to have said “shoot them”.
The gaffe was corrected when the then foreign minister Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie told the media that Mahathir only said “shoo them”, minus the “t”.
According to the Edmonton Journal of July 18, 1979, the then prime minister Tun Hussein Onn only recanted after two days of silence that the boat people would not be shot and would be housed.
The former head honcho of Wisma Putra, Tan Sri Ahmad Kamil Jaafar, who was then the undersecretary of Southeast Asia, said Mahathir did not want the Vietnamese boat people mainly because they were of Chinese origins.
“He was afraid that they may upset the racial proportion of the country where we have a Malay majority,” says Ahmad Kamil in an exclusive interview with The Heat Online.
Ahmad Kamil was against the “shoo policy” as he believed that Malaysia had the duty to give them refuge until the international community sorted out the mess in Vietnam.
Once known as the tiger of Wisma Putra as the man who played hard ball in diplomacy, Ahmad Kamil says he stood up to Mahathir and his boss Ghazali then.
It was 1975 when the Vietnam War ended and the communist regime was hounding the Vietnamese of Chinese origins. They started to flee the land, leaving everything behind. Many had lands and houses and were skilled workers. A number of them were also highly educated.
Some blogs have been set up by the young Vietnamese whose parents put up in the refugee camps in Malaysia. There were 250,000 over the years in the refugee camps in Pulau Bidong and Sungei Besi until 1991 when they were sent back in batches as the situation in Vietnam got better.
One blog called Pulau Bidong, which was started to reconnect with Pulau Bidong boat people, writes:“My parents (pic) fled Southern Vietnam (Ca Mau) after the Vietnam War in late 1978 when they were forced to leave because of all the hatred towards the Chinese people. The Chinese who did stay, were persecuted by the locals. My parents, along with their siblings acquired a boat through a friend, a compass, and a map for their journey.
“My parents, along with the people on their boat had no set destination in mind, just to flee and find freedom. They wanted to leave as quickly as they could, to find the freedom that the other millions of Chinese Vietnamese people who fled during the same time were looking for. They abandoned their house, belongings, mementos, and wedding photos in hope to flee the communist country. They took only what was most important to them. The most valuable thing my mom brought with her was her diamond ring which my dad bought for her for their wedding.”
Ahmad Kamil says when he first visited Pulau Bidong before the refugee camp was set up, it was full of rubbish. “The helicopter nearly crashed as the plastic bags from the ground were sucked up as we tried to land,” he recalls.
He also says the Vietnamese boat people were very resourceful. They set up their own schools and went about trying to continue their lives there as a community would.
Many of the developed countries were willing to take them in as they were skilled workers. He says this was not the case with the Rohingyas and Bangladeshis, which Malaysia took in after much pressure from the international community.
It is time Malaysia as the head of Asean, along with other members, force Myanmar to settle the Rohingya issue once and for all, he adds.
Malaysia cannot afford to be seen to use the “shoo policy”, as it was wont to during Mahathir’s time, as the eyes of the world are on us, checking on how we will solve this crisis.
Another former diplomat suggests that the government appoints Mahathir as the envoy to twist the arms of Asean countries to settle the issue.
“After all, Mahathir was respected by the regional and international community for the stands he took during his tenure,” says the diplomat, who did not want to be named.
