The Royal Commission of Inquiry on illegal immigrants in Sabah was formed on 11 August 2012 to investigate the problems relating to citizenship and immigrants in the state of Sabah in Malaysia. The inquiry is closely related to Project IC, the alleged systematic granting of citizenship to foreigners.
On 1 June 2012, Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the federal government has agreed to set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) to investigate problems related to illegal immigration in Sabah. [1] The Attorney-General of Malaysia was entrusted to draw the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the purpose of the commission. On 11 August 2012, the government officially announced the formation of the RCI including the members of the commission and the TORs. Political commentators have observed that the RCI appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to the defection of several prominent Sabahan BN politicians, who resigned in protest only a few days earlier because of the federal government's reluctance to deal with Sabah's immigration problems.
The commission began its public hearings on 14 January 2013. [2]
The commission member [3] are as follows:
There are 8 TORs: [4]
Former Sabah chief minister Harris Salleh testified in the inquiry that the final authority to grant citizenship to foreigners is with the federal government. He also denied the existence of Project IC. [5]
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad admitted that Filipino immigrants were granted citizenship in Sabah, but insists that everything was done legally. [6]
Former Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) deputy director Mohd Nasir Sugip told the commission that the former Sabah Election Commission director had ordered Sabah NRD to register 16,000 immigrants. He also added that the NRD and EC had collaborated to increase the number of Muslim voters in Sabah. [7]
Dissident blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin wrote in Malaysia Today that there is a plot by the Barisan Nasional government to increase the Muslim population in Sabah to retain power in the state. [8]
The Royal Commission of Inquiry start its first hearing session began on 14 January 2013
Date | Title | Public hearing / Government Body |
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The Royal Commission after going through a nine months of hearings and 211 witnesses, released a 366-page report. [9] [10] In the report several statements and recommendations were made: [11] [12]
The Jeffrey Cheah Institute held a roundtable discussion on 17th Dec to discuss the RCI Report. Moderated by Prof James Chin, a well-known political scientist, two senior Sabah politicians took part. They were:
East Malaysia, also known as Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan or Malaysian Borneo, is the part of Malaysia on and near the island of Borneo, the world's third largest island. It consists of the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, as well as the Federal Territory of Labuan. Labuan is an island in a small archipelago near the coast of Sabah. East Malaysia lies to the east of Peninsular Malaysia, the part of the country on the Malay Peninsula. The two are separated by the South China Sea.
Illegal immigration to Malaysia is the cross-border movement of people to Malaysia under conditions where official authorisation is lacking, breached, expired, fraudulent, or irregular. The cross-border movement of workers has become well-established in Southeast Asia, with Malaysia a major labour-receiving country and Indonesia and the Philippines the region's main labour-sending states. Managing cross-border migration has become an issue of increasing concern in Malaysia and its international relations.
Datuk Seri Panglima Mohd Shafie bin Apdal is a Malaysian politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Semporna since April 1995 and Member of the Sabah State Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Senallang since May 2018. He served as the 15th Chief Minister and the State Minister of Finance of Sabah from May 2018 to September 2020, Minister of Rural and Regional Development from April 2009 to July 2015 and Vice-President of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition. He has served as the 1st and founding President of Heritage Party (WARISAN), the opposition party that is aligned with the Pakatan Harapan (PH) opposition coalition, since October 2016. He lost the power as Chief Minister of Sabah following the defeat of his coalition WARISAN + in the 2020 state election.
Datuk Seri Utama Tengku Adnan bin Tengku Mansor is a Malaysian politician who served as Minister of Federal Territories, Minister of Tourism and Minister in the Prime Minister's Department in the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration under former Prime Ministers Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Razak from November 2002 to the collapse of the BN administration in May 2018. He has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Putrajaya since March 2004. He is a member of and has also served as Treasurer-General of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the ruling BN coalition which is aligned with another ruling Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition, since June 2018. He also served as Secretary-General of UMNO from March 2009 to June 2018.
Project IC is the name used in Malaysia to describe the allegation of systematic granting of citizenship to immigrants by giving them identity cards and subsequently its current iteration, the MyKad. The alleged practice is centred in the state of Sabah in East Malaysia. The term is used mainly by the media as well as other political commentators and the general public. Another term used is Project M, the "M" referring to former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad due to his being allegedly involved in the spearheading of this project.
General elections were held in Malaysia on Sunday, 5 May 2013 to elect the members of the 13th Parliament. Voting took place in all 222 parliamentary constituencies, each electing one MP to the Dewan Rakyat, the dominant house of Parliament. State elections also took place in 505 state constituencies in 12 of the 13 states on the same day.
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, abbreviated MACC or SPRM, is a government agency in Malaysia that investigates and prosecutes corruption in the public and private sectors. The MACC was modelled after top anti-corruption agencies, such as the Independent Commission Against Corruption of Hong Kong and the Independent Commission Against Corruption in New South Wales (ICAC), Australia.
Teoh Beng Hock was a Malaysian journalist and political aide to Ean Yong Hian Wah, a member of the Selangor state legislative assembly and state executive council. On 15 July 2009, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) took Teoh into custody for questioning about allegations of corruption. Teoh was found dead the next morning on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the MACC offices. Pakatan Rakyat leaders and a number of federal government officials have called for a Royal Commission of inquiry into Teoh's death.
Tan Sri Datuk Seri Panglima Abdul Gani bin Patail is a Malaysian prosecutor. He was the Attorney General of Malaysia from 2002 to 2015, the first from Sabah to hold the position.
The Immigration Department of Malaysia is a department of the Malaysian federal government that provides services to Malaysian citizens, permanent residents and foreign visitors. The department is responsible for issuing passports, travel documents, visas, passes and permits; administering and managing the movement of people at authorised entry and exit points; and enforcing immigration legislation including the Immigration Act 1959/63 and the Passport Act 1966. The department is a section of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Anti-Filipino sentiment refers to the general dislike or hatred towards the Philippines, Filipinos or Filipino culture. This can come in the form of direct slurs or persecution, in the form of connoted microaggressions, or depictions of the Philippines or the Filipino people as being inferior in some form psychologically, culturally or physically.
Datuk Seri Panglima Abdul Azeez bin Abdul Rahim is a Malaysian politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Baling since May 2013. He served as Chairman of the Tabung Haji (TH) from July 2013 to his resignation thanks to collapse of the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration in May 2018. He is a member of United Malay National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the ruling BN coalition.
Abdul Mutalib Mohd Daud was an ISA detainee, as well as the founder and chief editor of the news portal Sabahkini.net in Sabah, Malaysia. At the time of his death, he had completed two as yet unpublished books, one on the banning of Nurul Izzah Anwar from Sabah. In 2011 Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr. Rais Yatim filed a defamation lawsuit against Mutalib for allegations that the minister had raped his maid. He is the author of over 20 books, two of which, YB and VIP, are about sex scandals among public personalities.
The cross border attacks in Sabah are a series of cross border terrorist attacks perpetrated by Moro pirates from Mindanao, Philippines, in the state of Sabah, Malaysia, that began even before the British colonial period. Many civilians have died or suffered during these incidents, causing an increase in anti-Filipino sentiment among the native peoples of Sabah, especially after major attacks in 1985, 2000 and 2013. The attacks were more intense during the presidential terms of Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand Marcos, who supported irredentist claims to include eastern Sabah as part of the Philippines territory. In addition, recent infiltration and attacks by militants as well as uncontrolled human migration from Mindanao to Sabah has led to more unease sentiments among the local residents of Sabah, with around 78% of prison inmates that were caught in the state due to involvement in criminal activities and lawlessness issues mainly originating from the southern Philippines.
Filipino refugees are persons originating from the country of the Philippines. Following the Moro conflict and subsequent major military operation in the islands of Mindanao during the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1970s, thousands of Filipinos mainly from the Moro ancestry have sought refuge in neighbouring countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, with majority of them mostly heading to the state of Sabah in Malaysia.
The 2015 Malaysian Census reported the population of Sabah at 3,543,500, being the third most populous state in Malaysia and have the highest non-citizens population at 870,400. However, as Malaysia is one of the least densely populated countries in Asia, Sabah is particularly sparsely populated with most of the population concentrated in the coastal areas since towns and urban centres have massively expanded. The statistics in 1970 reported the population of Sabah with only 653,600, with both the state and its neighbour of Sarawak has about the same number of foreign nationals. By 1980, the state population saw a sudden increase to over 1,011,000 following the influx of refugees who fleeing a conflict in the neighbouring southern Philippines. At the same time, Sabah economic booms in the primary sector also attracted large legal workers from both Indonesia and the Philippines. This increase to over 1,863,600 in 1991, 2,603,485 in 2000, and by 2010 turned into 3,117,405. Sabah has 900,000 registered migrant workers working in agriculture, plantation, construction, services and domestic workers. While the total number of illegal immigrants are predicted to be as more than one million due to the past controversial regularisation for political reasons, with most of them are believed to have been categorised as "other bumiputera" category group in the country statistics. Sabah also witnessed a great increase in the number of expatriates, with most of them comes from China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia and Europe.
Datuk Darell Leiking, also known as Ignatius Dorell Leiking is a Malaysian politician who served as the Minister of International Trade and Industry in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration under former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad from July 2018 to the collapse of the PH administration in February 2020. He has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Penampang since May 2013, Member of the Sabah State Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Moyog since September 2020 and founding as well as 1st Deputy President of the Heritage Party (WARISAN) which is aligned with the PH opposition coalition since October 2016.
Tan Sri Datuk Amar Lee Hun Hoe was a Malaysian lawyer and judge who served as the fourth Chief Justice of Borneo.
The United Progressive Kinabalu Organisation is a multiracial political party based in Sabah, Malaysia. The party was rebranded from its previous party's name, United Pasokmomogun Kadazandusun Murut Organisation using the same UPKO acronym; which was a widely known Kadazan-Dusun-Murut based party in 2019. The party had earlier been renamed once before in 1999 from its initial 1994 formation name of Sabah Democratic Party. In August 2021, UPKO has officially joined the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition as a component party.
Tan Sri Henry Chin Poy Wu was former Malaysian police officer and a member of Sabah Royal Commission of Illegal Immigration.