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Dear Dato' Wong Chun Wai,

I have to place on record my deep disappointment at your recent article in The Sunday Star of 17 May 2009, under the title "A Disease Not To Be Sneezed At".  You have in essence attributed the incidence and resurgence of certain diseases in our country to the presence of migrant workers and illegal immigrants.  However the only factual basis for the views you expressed were 2 reports, one from 2000 and another from 2004.  Indeed the 2004 report to which you referred merely documented the incidence of certain diseases amongst 1 million foreign workers examined nationwide.  No comparison was made with any contemporaneous or subsequent study of the incidence of such diseases amongst Malaysians to establish any causal link.  In any event, neither of these reports constitutes up-to-date evidence to support your opinion.  The rest of the references were anecdotal in nature and not substantiated.

Even when writing about the very recent outbreak of leptospirosis at the Juru Detention Camp, you chose to ignore the much more fundamental point, which is that the Government is incarcerating foreign nationals in places and under conditions which are totally unhygienic.  At the very least, their water supply is contaminated.  Instead, you chose to conclude from this reference to the incidence of leptospirosis that "it is worrying that Malaysia is facing the return of diseases eliminated decades ago".  When did we eliminate leptospirosis?  And how did this particular outbreak occur?  Are you saying the foreign nationals brought leptospirosis into Malaysia?  If so, how did they do it, given that it arises from consuming water contaminated by animal urine?  Did they bring in their own water?  Did they smuggle their own animals across our borders?  Your conclusion is simply preposterous and misplaced in this regard.

Although your article started with an account of your experience being delayed by medical checks when visiting Shenzen, where ironically YOU may have been the foreign national suspected of bringing disease into China, and you made some references to borderless international travel, the better part of your article was devoted essentially to blaming migrant workers and illegal immigrants for much of the resurgent health problems in Malaysia.  As you wrote: "It would not be wrong to say that Malaysia is facing the emergence and re-emergence of diseases because of these foreigners."  The blame is clear: "because of these foreigners".  The contempt captured in the words "these foreigners" is palpable.  No attempt was made to include in the reference to "these foreigners" the well-heeled travellers who could be bringing influenza A (H1N1) to Malaysia.  It instantly reminded me of the favoured practice of our glorious men and women in blue of blaming foreign nationals for the increase in the incidence of crime in Malaysia.  By attempting to pinpoint someone else as being the cause of our problems, we offer a false panacea.  We are not to blame.  We are not responsible.  It is not because of us, but because of them, "these foreigners".  Remove them, and the problem is also removed.

Such a simplistic analysis does a great disservice to the proper understanding of the public health and safety concerns that face us as a nation.  When we mis-diagnose the problem, we mis-prescribe the solution.  While I do not deny that these public health and safety concerns exist, their causes are myriad and manifold.  By choosing to demonise a particular segment of our society as being the root cause of these problems, we encourage xenophobia, the unfounded and irrational fear of foreigners amongst us.  We promote hate and division.  We justify injustice, ill-treatment and the violation of their basic human rights.  Their crime: to belong to an economic and social underclass.

True, we already have ghettoes and no-go areas in some of our housing areas.  The Selayang market immediately comes to mind.  But the solution is not to label every foreigner as a threat to national security or a risk to public health and safety, or an economic competitor.  The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia has reported, for example, that there are 47,000 nationals from Myanmar registered with them, with their refugee status still being determined.  As many more are unregistered.  7,000 of them are of school-going age.  What we need to do is to register them, nourish them, accommodate them, care for their health and well-being, educate them, employ them.  So long as they remain on the periphery of society, they will be categorised as "non-persons" (since Malaysia has not signed the 1951 Convention on Refugees and does not recognise the concept of a refugee in our laws) and be viewed as an anonymous and faceless but ever-present threat or risk.

Our basic common humanity and, for those of us who are people of faith, our religious values demand no less: that they be treated with dignity and compassion.  Labelling them as dirty, diseased and dangerous and blaming them for our problems, which is essentially what you have done in your article, is certainly not the way forward.

Andrew Khoo Chin Hock
Kuala Lumpur