Sabah issued 12 times more ICs than Sarawak since 1963, RCI told
By Boo Su-Lyn
KOTA KINABALU, May 20 — About 66,000 immigrants in Sabah have received blue ICs since 1963, a whopping 12 times more than those in Sarawak, the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants heard today.
Sarawak National Registration Department (NRD) director Datuk Abu Bakar Mat testified at the RCI here today that 5,373 immigrants in Sarawak have been issued blue ICs from 1963 to 2012.
“In Sabah, it’s 66,000. The difference is very stark,” said conducting officer Manoj Kurup in response.
“The location of Sarawak is different from Sabah...geography is the cause of the flood of immigrants. This did not happen in Sarawak,” said Abu Bakar.
Thousands of Filipino refugees fled to Sabah in the 1970s to escape the Jolo civil war in the south.
The porous borders of Sabah were also breached last February when Sulu gunmen invaded Lahad Datu in the east coast that can be reached by boat in less than an hour from the southern Philippines.
Sarawak, however, has a land border with Kalimantan, Indonesia.
About 28 per cent of Sabah’s 3.2 million-strong population are foreigners, numbering a staggering 889,000 people.
The influx of illegal immigrants has angered Sabah natives like the Kadazandusun and Murut (KDM) communities, many of whom feel that the Borneo state has been robbed of its sovereignty through the deluge of foreigners from the Philippines and Indonesia.
UPKO president Tan Sri Bernard Dompok lost the Penampang federal seat, a KDM-majority constituency, in the May 5 general election.
Some Pakistani and Indian foreigners have also previously testified at the RCI about obtaining blue ICs within just a few years of arriving in Sabah and subsequently voting in elections.
The RCI, before a five-man panel chaired by former Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Tan Sri Steve Shim Lip Kiong, resumes later in the afternoon.
