Trekking the Jungles of Malaysia

Before I left on a mission, a friend told me to watch out for the leeches in the Malaysian jungles. But since my colleague and I were not traveling for eco-tourism reasons, I figured that I had little to worry about. The reason we came to Malaysia was mainly to look at the situation for the urban refugee population of ethnic Burmese in Kuala Lumpur. Little did I know that one week after arriving in Malaysia, I would be trekking up a path through the jungle with my colleague and two representatives from the Mon Burmese ethnic group.

We had been invited by the local Mon community organization to visit refugees working on a rubber tree plantation outside of Penang, about 4 hours north of Kuala Lumpur. After climbing up the path we came to a shelter with a tin roof, concrete floor, and one back wall. There we met a group of around twenty Mon refugees who worked on the rubber tree plantation. The refugees ranged in age from 16 to 41, all men. Most had arrived in Malaysia in the past few years, they had all had paid agents smuggle them into the country from eastern Burma. All had come to find work, but the reason they left Burma was because of the ongoing violence and human rights abuses in their home state.

They told us stories of active conflict in their villages and of land confiscation and forced labor by the Burmese military. Clearly this group, like the majority of the refugees who have come to Malaysia from Burma, have legitimate asylum claims. But since Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, they are not given any special protection or assistance by the government, and they are instead classified as illegal migrants.

UNHCR has been able to register a fair number of the Burmese refugees in Malaysia, particularly those who are seen as the most vulnerable, but the agency is dealing with a large backlog of cases and inadequate resources. Groups like the one that we met with slip through the cracks, mostly because they are living in the jungle in makeshift shelters, afraid to leave the plantation for fear of being arrested since they have no documents. Many of them are also not familiar with UNHCR or the work that the agency is doing in Malaysia.

While we were speaking with the group, the thick humidity in the air gave way to pouring rain.