PETALING JAYA: The Child Rights Coalition Malaysia has urged the government to do away with the detention of refugee and asylum-seeking children as it has a lasting psychological effect on them.
The coalition of several children’s rights Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) in Malaysia took up a United Nations call urging governments to end child detention by launching a month-long campaign that began on Sept 25.
The campaign, called End Immigration Detention of Children, aimed to educate people on child detentions and to garner at least 3,000 signatures to be handed to the relevant authorities.
A two-day event featuring skits, talks and exhibition was held at Publika Square and Publika Black Bridge in Kuala Lumpur.
Refugee children and activists fighting for the cause shared the horror of being detained at the 12 detention centers all over Malaysia, which are often overcrowded and lacking in the most basic facilities.
The coalition highlighted seven main problems at the immigration detention centers – overcrowding for the 150,000 odd detainees, lack of food and clean water, poor medical care, poor sanitation, limited number of bedding and the lack of special protection or procedure for children in the centers.
Malaysia has a large refugee and asylum seeker population, mainly from Myanmar.
Tenaganita programme officer Katrina Jorene Maliamauv said detainees in these centers are stripped of their dignity.
“Those detained are often whipped and forced to live in abominable conditions. The effects of the detention lasts well beyond the detention centers. It is worse for children,” she said in a speech.
Voices of Children chairperson Sharmila Sekaran said it was not right that children are detained although they did not commit any offence.
“Most of the time, these children are running away from something, for example the situation in Syria. These children are already at a disadvantage and putting them in detention centers is neither beneficial nor helpful,” she said.
She added that many of these children are detained for three months to over a year, a long period in a child’s life.
“What we are doing here is asking the government and society to look at alternatives to deal with the refugee children,” she said.
According to studies, children in detention are 10 times more likely to develop psychiatric disorders and that detention for a short period of time can damage their mental health and development.
These children are more exposed to the possibility of separation anxiety, disrupted conduct, suicide attempts, loss of language, poor eating, nightmares, self-harm and mutism.
Alternative methods to child detention are already being practised by Hong Kong and other countries.
The International Detention coalition recommended the Community Assessment and Placement model – a guideline to help governments come up with alternative methods to detention.
– THE STAR
