Kuala Lumpur May 7 (FMT) — A lawyer who helped secure the release of two foreigners recently has welcomed the inspector-general of police’s decision to put an end to random checks on migrants.
V Vemal Arasan said the authorities should immediately stop arresting foreigners for the sake of “verifying” their documents, especially when they have valid documents on them.
“It takes a few minutes to verify the details with the immigration authorities, not two weeks,” he told FMT.
Vemal had previously represented Vietnamese Tran Thi Thoai Trin and Nigerian Simon Adavize Momoh, who were detained for long periods.
He said that when the legislation concerning such checks was passed, everything had to be verified manually. But now, this process is automated.
“In fact, it is incumbent upon the government to make the necessary amendments to the Immigration Act so that further abuses do not take place,” he said.
Yesterday, new IGP Acryl Sani Abdullah said he would issue a directive to stop police officers and personnel from conducting random checks on foreigners “without a reasonable or valid reason”.
This, he said, was to prevent a handful of police officers and personnel from abusing their powers at will.
“Besides that, the police cannot detain them at will, or to be remanded for two weeks, on the grounds of confirming whether their Immigration Department-stamped passport or document is genuine or otherwise,” Bernama quoted him as saying.
Tran, who is married to a Malaysian and has a son, was detained for 11 days to enable authorities to verify her documents after she failed to use the MySejahtera app to check in at a restaurant.
The 25-year-old was released after admitting guilt at the Klang magistrates’ court and paying a fine of RM350.
Momoh was detained at the Semenyih immigration depot for 40 days after being arrested for drink-driving in March. Momoh, who is married to a Malaysian and has two children, was released on April 23.
