Malaysia Refugees
AP-APTN-0930: Malaysia Refugees
Monday, 13 June 2011
STORY:Malaysia Refugees- REPLAY A report on the harassment of refugees in Malaysia
LENGTH: 02:14
FIRST RUN: 0630
RESTRICTIONS: Part No Access Australia
TYPE: English/Nat
SOURCE: AP TELEVISION/AuBC
STORY NUMBER: 692866
DATELINE: Puchong/Darwin - 8 June 2011
LENGTH: 02:14
AP TELEVISION - AP CLIENTS ONLY
AuBC - NO ACCCESS AUSTRALIA
SHOTLIST
AP TELEVISION - AP CLIENTS ONLY
Puchong, Malaysia - 8 June 2011
1. Wide of Myanmarese refugee children inside classroom
2. Myanmarese refugee boys playing with chess pieces inside classroom
3. Myanmarese refugee girl in front of computer screen
4. Wide of Myanmarese refugee children greeting guests inside classroom
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Nyein Su Wai, 14-year old Myanmarese refugee:
"I want to visit Australia like (INAUDIBLE), to have many animals like kangaroo, I want to see."
6. Wide of Nyein Su Wai and other school children inside classroom
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Nyein Su Wai, 14-year old Myanmarese refugee:
"I crossed the river into Thailand and we passed through the jungle."
AuBC - NO ACCCESS AUSTRALIA
Darwin, Australia - 8 June 2011
8. Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard greeting people in Darwin
9. Gillard walking with men
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Julia Gillard, Australian Prime Minister:
"We would take four-thousand genuine refugees from Malaysia. Now I think Australians want to see us extend that kind of compassion to people who are refugees, who have often been in places for years, there are refugees in Malaysia who have been there for years, they don't now have the prospect of a resettlement opportunity and we will extend the opportunity to come to Australia to four-thousand of them."
11. Gillard inside radio booth
AP TELEVISION - AP CLIENTS ONLY
Puchong, Malaysia - 8 June 2011
12. Various of Myanmarese refugees watching television
13. Wide of young Myanmarese refugee boy walking up steps
14. Myanmarese refugee boys singing in bunk room for boys
15. Pan of bunk room for girl refugees
16. Wide of refugee girls lying in their bed
STORYLINE:
Fourteen-year-old Myanmarese Nyein Su Wai's eyes light up when she talks about her dream of travelling to Australia.
She wants to see the "interesting animals", koalas and kangaroos, but says what would make her happiest is living without the constant fear of harassment that she endures as a refugee in Malaysia.
"I want to visit Australia," she told The Associated Press in a modest school for Myanmarese refugee children run without state help in suburban Puchong outside Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur.
For three years, Su Wai has shared a single bedroom room with her parents and two sisters in a rented apartment that they share with other refugees on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.
She vividly recalls fleeing the military junta of Myanmar in search of a brighter future and walking for miles through jungles and sugarcane plantations to cross into Thailand.
She hid under a blanket in a van as people smugglers brought them into Malaysia, where they are still regarded as illegal immigrants, despite the UN refugee agency UNHRC registering them as refugees.
Her father is a handy man and her mother works illegally in an electronics factory.
Su Wai is one of the potential winners from a refugee swap deal being negotiated between Australia and Malaysia.
"We would take four-thousand genuine refugees from Malaysia. Now I think Australians want to see us extend that kind of compassion to people who are refugees, who have often been in places for years, there are refugees in Malaysia who have been there for years," Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said last week.
Australia would rescue four-thousand from among more than 93-thousand registered refugees - mostly from Myanmar - who eke out a precarious existence on the fringe of Malaysian society and law.
They usually survive on odds jobs but risk detention and beatings with the dreaded rattan cane for doing so because in the twilight world that they inhabit they are officially not allowed to work or have access to state education.
The losers are the 800 asylum seekers that Malaysia would take off Australia's hands in return.
They are the main focus of international attention on the deal.
Critics of the plan say that Australia, a wealthy country, is shirking its international responsibilities by shunting asylum seekers off to a developing nation with a tarnished human rights record that has not signed UN Conventions on Refugees or Against Torture.
Australia maintains that the deal will protect the asylum seekers' rights and promises that they will be spared the cane in Malaysia.
But the deal has only one driving purpose: to deter asylum seekers from coming to Australia by boat.
The increasing flow of asylum seekers paying people smugglers to ferry them from transit points in Malaysia and Indonesia by boat is a burning political issue in Australia and Prime Minister's Julia Gillard's inability to stop them is hurting her government in opinion polls.
While the numbers are small by international standards, the worsening problem is intolerable to many Australians who share a border with no country and prize their relative isolation.
Refugees are also targeted in complaints of overcrowding and inadequate infrastructure in Australia's largest cities.
In Malaysia, rights advocates say refugees like Su Wai and her family face beatings, overcrowding, insufficient food and poor sanitation.
While the details of the agreement between Malaysia and Australia are not finalised, clearly asylum seekers from Australia will have privileges over their stateless counterparts in Malaysia.
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APEX 06-13-11 0532EDT