Malaysian immigration is under fire again over its treatment of foreigners, in particular, people of colour.
The Namibia High Commissioner Anne Namakau Mutelo on Saturday August 17 said her nephews, Adventure Simataa Simasiku and Roydie Mabengano Simasiku, were detained by an immigration officer for three hours after arriving in the country.
Mutelo claimed that the officer’s action in detaining them illegally violated the rights of the Namibians adding that an immigration officer told her ‘This is Malaysia and not Namibia” when she inquired about her nephews.
She said she informed the immigration officers that she was the high commissioner to Malaysia and requested to know the reasons for the detention. But the boys were already in an immigration office for detention. She complained in a media statement of rude treatment by an immigration officer at KLIA.
Most harrowing, said Mutelo, is the actions of the officer who “insultingly threw” the passports back at her.
Many foreigners say its tougher to enter Malaysia since Pakatan Harapan took power last year.
A Nigerian student died in detention after he got caught by enforcement officers. The Nigerian Embassy said the student had a valid student pass.
But the immigration said they arrested and detained him for running away during a raid.
However, they extended his detention on suspicion his pass was fake which caused a
fury among Nigerians living in Malaysia.
In the Mutelo case, the Immigration Department denied allegations that it had acted unjustly against the two nephews of the Namibian High Commissioner to Malaysia in an incident at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) on Monday.
Its director-general, Khairul Dzaimee Daud, in a statement to Bernama, said the two men were taken to the department’s operations office in KLIA merely to obtain further information about their social visit to the country.
“Both of them had earlier failed to provide satisfactory answers at the immigration arrival counter,” he said.
According to Bernama, the Immigrations director-general said Mutelo had rushed into the operations room and questioned the department’s standard operating procedures.
He said he will send a protest letter next week to Wisma Putra after Mutelo’s intervention in the operations room of a government agency, creating an uproar over something that is not true.
However, Mutelo told the local media one of his nephews recorded part of the scuffle but he had to delete the recording because the immigration officer forced him to do so. -/TISG