No real victory: The Constitution was finally amended to grant Malaysian women the right to pass on their citizenship to their foreign-born children. Unfortunately, the amendment is not retroactive. — Bernama
IT almost felt like a Faustian bargain. “I’ll give you what you want but in return I will destroy your sense of justice.”
And so it went that after a long battle, Malaysian women got what they wanted, the right to pass on their citizenship to their foreign-born children, a right that Malaysian men have had since Day One.
Everybody cheered. Until some took a closer look at the fine print. It turns out that this Constitutional amendment was not retroactive, which means that the foreign-born children that you already have are not automatically eligible for citizenship, only those you may have from now on.
This was no comfort to the women who for years have been forced to take their children in and out of the country so that they could keep renewing their visas. That expensive nightmare is not over; they must still go through the rigmarole of applying for their children’s citizenship. It was especially a shock to the women who had been divorced or widowed overseas and had returned home with their children to live surrounded by the loving arms of their original family. Many are not necessarily planning to have more children overseas with foreign husbands.
This new amendment then is really like playing tennis with an invisible ball; it will score nothing at all.
But more importantly, it underscores Malaysian officialdom’s attitude towards women who had the temerity, in their eyes, to fall for foreign men. “Who told you to marry those foreign fellas? This is the trouble you put your children through.” Of course, nobody ever scolds Malaysian men for marrying foreign women and having children born abroad. Indeed, they could have a wife and children in every port and all those children would be automatically entitled to Malaysian citizenship.
But that is not the Faustian bargain. To “give” women what should have been their right, our government deemed it necessary to take away other long-held rights. Both of which affect women and children particularly badly.
There are two types of permanent residents. There is the expat type who may be citizens of another country but having lived here for so long they are able to obtain permanent residency here. But there are also whole groups of people who are born here but are only considered permanent residents of our country.
Orang Asli and Orang Asal are descended from people who have lived on this land for hundreds, even thousands, of years, far longer from almost everyone else here. But due to their remoteness and possible ignorance, they very often do not have the documents needed to prove they are citizens. Of course, logically speaking, they can’t possibly belong anywhere else. But we are such a bureaucratic country that without papers to stamp, we can’t acknowledge them as citizens, only permanent residents.
Our Constitution used to state that the locally-born children of such permanent residents are automatically citizens. This is in line with Article 7 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child: the child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality, and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.
But now, with this amendment, these children will also be considered permanent residents, as will their future descendants. In other words, unlike expats who have other passports, these PR are in fact stateless. All we’ve done is increased the number of stateless people in our own land.
In case you don’t know, permanent residents cannot vote. So not only do we not value these people as human beings with rights, but we also don’t even entertain their value as voters. They simply do not count.
That’s only one part of the Faustian bargain. The other part affects foreign women married to Malaysian men. If our government is kind enough to grant them citizenship, but if by some unfortunate circumstance they get divorced from their husbands within two years of obtaining that citizenship, then that citizenship is revoked. Previously it was only revoked if they get divorced within two years after getting married. But now even if they have been married for decades but the wife only recently became a Malaysian citizen, she can lose citizenship if they separate within two years of that latter date.
I can understand if, to prevent bogus marriages, the deadline is two years from the wedding. But it takes years to obtain citizenship, and the couple may have been married for decades by the time she becomes Malaysian. The reasons for separation after that may be due to things like him taking another wife or domestic violence. If she stands to lose her citizenship if they divorce within two years of obtaining it, the wife may decide to stay on in an abusive marriage just to get past that deadline. The stakes are high for her because losing her citizenship may also mean losing access to her children, a disincentive to protect herself by leaving the marriage.
Right-thinking Malaysian women cannot fully celebrate this amendment to the Consti-tution. Yes, it is good to now be equal to Malaysian men in our supreme law but only young women getting married and having babies now will truly benefit from it. The caveat is that the amendment deprives other women and children of their rights. It divides women into unequal camps, and therefore weakens all of them. That was the game plan.
I only hope women will not fall for it and will continue fighting for the rights of all women and children, and not just some. Reportedly, 206 members of Parliament voted for this amendment, some of whom are women and some surely with foreign spouses and daughters-in-law. Some probably “represent” many of the local-born permanent residents they have now doomed to discrimination in perpetuity. I hope they sleep well at night.
Marina Mahathir applauds YB Syed Saddiq for being the only MP to stand up for all Malaysians and not just some. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
