Asylum seekers pay RM3,500 for UNHCR cards in Malaysia!
UN body suspends all resettlement of refugees and launches a probe into fraudulent practices.
KUALA
LUMPUR: An Al-Jazeera investigative report for its Asian current
affairs programme, 101 East, has apparently discovered that the issuance
of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) cards in
Malaysia, supposedly free, has degenerated into a racket.The going rate, allegedly created by UNHCR officials who act as middlemen, is in the RM1,700 to RM3,500 range for each card.
These cards, according to senior presenter Steve Chao in a media update, are being sold to those who want to jump the queue.
Also, the queue jumpers included about 3,000 asylum seekers who allegedly used false identities to secure early interviews with UNHCR staff to determine their refugee status. “About 1,000 of them have since been resettled in countries like the US, Canada and Australia,” alleged Chao.
Chao’s exclusive, Malaysia’s Unwanted, aired on the Qatar-based news broadcaster’s channel on Astro.
Chao went undercover, posing as a priest, to check on the Immigration Department’s detention centre in Kuala Lumpur. This followed a tip-off from inside sources in UNHCR that the UN body, at one time, had suspended all resettlement of refugees and launched a probe into fraudulent practices.
UNHCR head Richard Towle, who confirmed the suspension and probe in a media update, added that “if a complaint is brought forward, it is investigated by an independent body out of Geneva”.
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