Sabah MP welcomes disclosure of illegal immigration report in Parliament

After months of waiting, the report by the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into Sabah's illegal immigration problem will finally be made public when it is brought to the next Parliament sitting.

This promise made by Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan, who is from Sabah, has been welcomed by Penampang MP Dareel Leiking.

Leiking said this was the first time a minister had stated so clearly that the RCI report would be released to the public.

"Prior to this, despite many calls by the peoples of Sabah for the government to release the report, Putrajaya has kept quiet. The minister’s words, if true, will be an early Christmas gift to the people of Sabah," he said in a letter to The Malaysian Insider today.

Rahman had said the RCI report would be tabled in Parliament, which convenes its next sitting tomorrow.

Rahman said this during a forum "Sabah dalam atau keluar Malaysia" (Sabah in or out of Malaysia), which was organised by Suara Masyarakat Sabah (SMS), a non-governmental organisation based in Kota Kinabalu.

It has been more than a year since the RCI proceedings ended at the Kota Kinabalu High Court, with 211 witnesses giving their testimony, and five months since the RCI report was submitted to the King.

Leiking said Rahman (pic, below) also told the forum during the question and answer session that the Cabinet felt that MPs should get the report before the public.

"I, as the people’s representative for Penampang, cannot wait to read the final RCI report. I can only hope this RCI report will provide the closure that Sabah needs in order to move forward.

"The 2.4 million 'real' Sabahans, cannot wait to read the RCI report. Since the 1970s, the people of Sabah have suffered in every aspect of normal living by the sheer number of illegals moving into Sabah," Leiking said.

The Borneo state's population rose by 390% over 30 years, with the arrival of illegal immigrants who were later allegedly made citizens through Project IC.

"These illegals not only took jobs away from Sabahans but flooded our hospitals and schools and contributed to the lawless reputation of the state.

"No other state in Malaysia, or for that matter no other country, would tolerate this sort of people invasion," Leiking said.

The RCI, chaired by former Borneo chief judge Tan Sri Steve Shim, began on September 21, 2012, and covered eight terms of reference.

These included investigating the number of foreigners issued Malaysian identity cards via Project IC, whether the issuance was in accordance with the law, whether they had been registered in the Sabah electoral roll and the social implications of these foreigners in Sabah.

Amid all the testimonies heard during the year-long proceedings, which concluded in September last year, the names of former deputy home minister Tan Sri Megat Junid Megat Ayub and former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad frequently cropped up.

Dr Mahathir, who appeared before the panel last year, denied any knowledge of Project IC.

Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who was Dr Mahathir's deputy until he was sacked in 1998, also testified and said it was impossible for the latter not to know about Project IC as such a large-scale operation could not have been carried out without the approval of the executive, especially since Dr Mahathir was also Home Minister in the late 1980s and throughout most of the 1990s.

Project IC refers to the allegations of systematic granting of citizenship to legal or illegal immigrants by issuing them Malaysian identity cards (IC), which were later renamed "MyKad".

It was reported that by the end of the proceedings, a key point that was clear then was the fact that illegal immigrants in Sabah had been issued Malaysian identity cards indiscriminately.

Witnesses who were asked how the problem could be solved said it would be very difficult as some of the immigrants have lived in Sabah for decades.

After the proceedings, the commissioners worked through the various exhibits and documents tendered during the inquiry, and in May this year the RCI submitted its report on the outcome of the investigations to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. – October 6, 2014.

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