PUTRAJAYA: Abdul Mutalib Taib has left
his wife in a quandary � two of their four children are recognised as
Malaysians while the other two are considered Indonesians.
This situation came about because he illegally stayed
back after his Permanent Resident status was revoked back in 1996 and
fathered two more children with his wife Romita Hasibuan.
Now that
he will be deported, his wife, who is on a spousal visa, and their two
younger children will also be deported since their Malaysian documents are
deemed to have been obtained fraudently.
The two older children,
Maruly Aziz, 12, and Sarah Nor Varah Hanim, 11, however, cannot be
deported as they are regarded as Malaysians since they were born before
Abdul Mutalib�s PR status was revoked.
Abdul Mutalib, 47, arrived
in Malaysian in 1978 to work. In 1989, he applied for and was granted PR
status.
�However, in 1996, our department received orders to
revoke his PR,� said National Registration Department (NRD) director of
Investigations and Enforcement unit Datin Habsah Wahid.
But instead
of surrendering himself, Abdul Mutalib went into hiding.
When he
turned up at the NRD office recently to apply for his eldest son�s
identity card, the authorities arrested him.
As he had violated the
Immigration Act, he was handed over to the Immigration Department for
further action.
�Our investigations are not yet finished. As in all
such cases, our investigations would also affect his family. That is why
we recently asked his wife to bring in all their children�s birth
certificates. Amendments need to be made on their status,� Habsah
said.
Abdul Mutalib will be deported to Medan, Indonesia, as the
period for his appeal has lapsed.
Immigration Department
enforcement director, Datuk Ishak Mohamed, said the notice of deportation
was issued on April 22.
Habsah was explaining to The Malay Mail at
her office yesterday the circumstances surrounding Abdul Mutalib�s arrest
by the department on March 23.
His wife had, at a Press conference
at the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia�s (Suhakam) office on
Wednesday, claimed he was wrongly arrested.
Romita, accompanied by
her children � Maruly, Sarah Nor, Yonatan Adam Fauzi, nine, and Ismael
Syah Putra, six, � handed a memorandum to Suhakam�s Datuk Siva Subra-
maniam.
The memorandum, among others, had pleaded with Suha- kam to
help the family fight for their rights as immigrants to this
country.
Romita admitted that in 1995, her husband was detained
under the Internal Security Act.
Habsah said Abdul Mutalib�s PR
was revoked under Section 8(3)(k) of the Immigration Act 1959/63
(Amendment 2002).
The reasons for the order are not
known
Abdul Mutalib, she said, must have been aware of the order as
a notice was issued to him then.
�He could have tried to be smart
by thinking that he could take advantage of the transition period when the
NRD was inputting everyone�s data into the central computer system which
we now use,� she said.
She explained that when the order was issued
to revoke Abdul Mutalib�s PR status, the NRD had manually cancelled all
his rights as a PR.
�However, cancelling the same information in
our computer system took some time (as data of more than 24 million people
had to be inputted).
�The man could have taken advantage of this
and continued living in the country as if he had not committed any
offence,� she said, adding that the department had been looking for him
since.
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