Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first decade
of the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/Malaysia.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspect(s) of street life are of particular
interest to you. You might be
interested in exploring how children got there, how they survive, and how some
manage to leave the street. Perhaps
your paper could focus on how some street children abuse the public and how
they are abused by the public … and how they abuse each other. Would you like to write about market
children? homeless children? Sexual and labor exploitation? begging? violence? addiction? hunger? neglect? etc. There is a lot to the subject of Street
Children. Scan other countries as well
as this one. Draw comparisons between
activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Helping Malaysia's
street children Jasbant Singh, Al
Jazeera, english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2007/07/2008525172813676892.html [accessed 17 June
2011] About 500 children
are left to loiter at night in the back streets minutes away from the bright
lights of "I know people
say what I do is immoral and not good for children, but if I don't do this
who's going to feed my child?" asks Anita, one of ***
ARCHIVES *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61615.htm [accessed 10
February 2020] CHILDREN
- The
government has demonstrated a commitment to children's rights and welfare and
allocated approximately 25 percent of the national budget to education. The
government provides free education for children through age 15. Although
primary education is compulsory, there is no enforcement mechanism governing
school attendance. Attendance at primary school was 96 percent, while
secondary school attendance was 82 percent. A variety of programs provided
low cost health care for most children. No documents, so
street children of KK can’t get into school Muguntan Vanar, The
Star, thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/1/18/nation/2953739&sec=nation [accessed 17 June
2011] Haris is among a
few hundred “document-less” children mainly from marriages between locals and
foreigners. Without any valid documents, they are unable to enrol in schools. The children mostly
become “street kids” taking up odd jobs ranging from car washing to peddling
contraband cigarettes. Many are blamed for various crimes such as petty
thefts here and in other parts of the state. However, Azlan Jeh,
12, said not all the children were involved in unhealthy activities. “We work and go fishing although we don’t
go to school.” Muguntan Vanar, The
Star, thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/7/9/nation/20080709160828&sec=nation [accessed 17 June
2011] Sabah Police
Commissioner Datuk Noor Rashid Ibrahim said the special operation to rescue
street children would be conducted at major towns where these children are
not schooling and were mostly loitering and peddling goods in the streets. "Not all of
them are children of foreigners. We have found that children of locals are
also resorting to street peddling activities. "They are not
involved in crimes but more involved in selling contraband cigarettes,
lottery results and begging, among other things," he told reporters
Wednesday after launching the Campaign for Security, Unity and Harmony. Undocumented
children in Camilla Olson,
Refugees International, 06/13/2007 www.refugeesinternational.org/policy/field-report/malaysia-undocumented-children-sabah-vulnerable-statelessness [accessed 17 June
2011] [accessed 24
December 2016] Decades of
irregular migration to Sabah in eastern Malaysia have resulted in large
numbers of undocumented children of migrants from the Philippines and
Indonesia who are potentially at risk of statelessness. Undocumented migrants
in Malaysia are targets for arrest and deportation, which in some cases has
left their children alone on the street. The exact number of
street children in Sabah is unknown, but they are estimated to be in the
thousands, mostly of Filipino descent. There is strong local resentment of
undocumented migrants in Sabah, and the street children are portrayed as a
criminal element by authorities and the media. The children working at the
fish markets are wary of outsiders and are under constant threat of raids by
police. In 2006, the police arrested about 160 street children who were
placed in detention. Those with family contacts were eventually released, but
there is no information on the whereabouts of the others. Zugoh, a
12-year-old boy of Filipino descent, works through the night at a fish market
in Kota Kinabalu. He pushes a heavy wooden cart hoping that customers will
allow him to transport their purchases to their car. Zugoh earns around 1
MYR, or 30 cents per customer. Zugoh does not have a father. He has a mother,
but he does not stay with her. Zugoh told RI that he sleeps somewhere on the
street near the fish market. He does not go to school, and he has no identity
documents. The Government of
Malaysia has been cracking down on irregular migrants in the country. In
Sabah, raids are conducted in housing areas where the migrants live and in
markets and public areas where many work. Those arrested are deported back to
their country of origin. Many children whose parents have been deported and
who do not have any other family or guardian in Sabah end up living and
working on the street at a very young age, often in fish markets. A local
community worker told RI, "It's those who have nobody who are there [in
the fish markets]." Special squads to
help ‘street children’ of Johor Hamdan Raja
Abdullah, The Star, Muar, September 12, 2007 thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/9/12/nation/18852540&sec=nation [accessed 17 June
2011] streetchildrennews.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/p1005/ [accessed 24
December 2016] Special squads will
be formed by the state to help “street children” found loitering in Johor
Baru. The squads will
help and guide these children and provide then with skills training. She said the
children, mostly aged between 11 and 19, had been roaming the city, including
in the wee hours, although many had parents. “We want to save these children before they
get into trouble and become a nuisance. Plans are under way to set up special
squads to help guide, train and advise these children,” she said. From streets to
schools New Straits Times,
April 20, 2007 www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-138008283.html [partially accessed
17 June 2011 - access restricted] Society tends to
see street children as social sores who tarnish the tourist landscape and
make a general nuisance of themselves with their aimless loitering, hassling
for handouts and sleeping in the streets. Many respectable citizens would
like nothing better than to see the authorities harry homeless kids, take
them off the streets and put them in the special homes for the wayward. Ruben Sario, The
Star, April 18, 2007 thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/4/18/nation/20070418145805&sec=nation [accessed 17 June
2011] www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2007/04/18/sabah-building-shelter-home-for-immigrant-street-children/ [accessed 24
December 2016] Sabah is building a
RM1.9mil shelter home and vocational training centre for immigrant street
children, Assistant Minister of Community Development Jornah Mozihim told the
state assembly. She told Mohd Kamil
Datuk Mohd Kassim (BN-Tanjung Batu) that the Women, Family and Community
Development Ministry would provide the funds for the shelter in Inanam. We will get kids
back in school Deborah Loh,
Putrajaya At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 17 June
2011] "If somebody
can identify them and bring them to us, we’ll find ways to get them back in
school," he said after his ministry’s post-cabinet meeting yesterday. The report said the
children were between 14 and 18 years old. About 16 of them are often seen
roaming Johor Baru’s streets, sleeping on cardboard boxes on the pavement,
eating restaurant leftovers, using public washrooms and braving older boys
who extort money from them. The teenagers had
said that they preferred to spend time on the streets as their families were
poor or they came from broken homes, and teachers and fellow students
ridiculed them in school. Cops warn those who
buy 4-D result sheets from street kids [accessed 18 January
2017] City Police Chief,
ACP Ku Chin Wah, said police would be pulling up people who buy 4-D result
sheets from street children in the city.
"We will arrest those who stop and buy the result sheets, just as
we would arrest the children," he said. Fund-raiser today
for homeless, street children in Chow Kit [accessed 18 January
2017] They have a place
to stay during the day but at night, they sleep under bridges or at stalls in
the Chow Kit area. This is the fate of
children with the Pusat Aktiviti Kanak-Kanak Chow Kit, which has to close at
5pm every day since it is only licensed as a day-care centre. Street kids facing
bleak future... unless they can bend it like Beckham Jaswinder Kaur, 24
Jun 2006 [accessed 18 January
2017] The boys are among
thousands of children born to Filipino migrants who, for decades, have been
crossing rough seas to seek a better life in Many have Malaysian
birth certificates but can’t apply for MyKad as their parents are from the
Philippines. Others don’t even have any documents. These children have
no choice but to roam the streets in search of money. While some try to earn
a decent living, others pester tourists and locals for money. Some even
charge motorists a ‘protection fee’ for guarding their cars. Malaysian
Judicial Whitewash Eric F. Mallonga,
The At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 17 June
2011] Malaysian police
apprehended all street children and retarded children for deportation to the EDITORIAL:
Save the children The New Straits
Times, Feb 1, 2008 www.nst.com.my/Friday/Columns/2129383/Article/index_html [Last access date
unavailable] With no legal
status, they become fugitives from the law. Unschooled and unqualified, they
do odd jobs and peddle pirated VCDs or contraband cigarettes to keep body and
soul together. Desperation and despair drive some to sell their bodies or
into crime. They are falling through the cracks and there is no refuge nor
respite for these fatherless and motherless street children in Street
Children List Education As Their Priority Daily Express, 18
July, 2005 www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=35848 [Last access date
unavailable] According to
Fernandez, the children said they want education when asked on their first
priority. During her dialogue with
Sabahans, she learned that Deutsche
Presse-Agentur (German Press Agency) DPA, www.questia.com/library/1G1-129472067/malaysia-starts-major-crackdown-on-illegal-immigrants [accessed 11
Aug 2013] During the amnesty
period, which began in October, nearly 400,000 illegal workers out of the
estimated one million immigrants left the country without facing any
penalties. Children
Pay High Price of Asian Economic Miracle Tony Austin, Free At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 17 June
2011] In All
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