It seems that there is nothing wrong with stigmatising certain children in Malaysia

Reproduced from Malaysiakini.com

JPN on the look-out for illegitimate Malay children
Dr Yati Hewett | May 6, 08 4:54pm

On the evening of April 7, a terribly upset young couple walked into my surgery. Earlier in the day, they had an altercation with the staff of the National Registration Department (JPN) at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital.

The woman was 18 years old and her husband 24 years old. On April 1, she delivered a baby girl weighing 1.4 kg. She was so tiny she had to be put in an incubator. On the day in question, they had gone to visit their baby with a couple of friends. After that the whole group went to the JPN office to register the baby's birth.

The counter staff scrutinised their marriage certificate and after doing some arithmetic, publicly announced the baby was conceived out of wedlock. As such only the baby's name and the mother's name could be entered in the register.

In the space for father's particulars shall be written 'Information not Available'. In the baby's MyKid identity card shall be entered baby's name followed by ‘bin or binti Abdullah’.

The couple refused to register the baby. They were so upset and humiliated. The baby has since died of prematurity. She never had a birth certificate.

After enquiring from several JPN offices at various places, I learnt that the director-general of JPN had issued an internal circular on July 6, 2007 to the effect that JPN should ‘look out’ for illegitimate Malay children and that they be labelled, accordingly, ‘bin Abdullah’ or ‘binti Abdullah’.

From that day many babies do not have their father's names on their birth certificates.

The question that comes to my mind is WHY? In seven years time, when these children go to school they would be subjected to taunts, ridicule and shame. Not to mention the distress , anxiety and pain of the fathers at not seeing their names in such an important document. Why is the JPN inflicting such suffering onto so many people? Who authorised them to be the ‘Guardian of Public Morals’?

In my 14 years of running a maternity practice, I have seen so many government rules come and go. There have been good ones and not so good ones. But the present rule takes the cake. It makes it very hard to register births. Requirements to register births are so stringent that many babies are not registered. Ironically, rulings created today would only create problems for JPN later on.

Previously, any form of identification of the mother would do eg, the marriage certificate. Now she must produce a non-expired passport and a valid visa. It is a common knowledge that runaway migrant workers do not have those. Without birth certificates, the babies are not adoptable. So babies end up in garbage dumps and the like.

And JPN only recognises marriage certificates issued in Malaysia. Many Malaysian men went to Indonesia and brought back young brides. Their children are all 'bin/ binti Abdullah'.

Marriage certificates are not a must to register the birth of a baby. All that is required is both mother and father sign a declaration at the back of Borang JPN.LM01 (known as Section 13 ) in front of a JPN official. This is provided for by the law.

This provision was taken away from Muslims by JPN from July 2007. As far as I know, this provision in the law has not been amended or withdrawn. The fact that JPN could issue a circular counter to the law is something that should be looked into.

Children are our future. They should be protected. Religious zealots in the civil service should be identified and given the boot.

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My comments:

I read the above letter written by Dr. Yati Hewitt titled "JPN on the look-out for illegitimate Malay children" published on Malaysiakini and the response by Joseph Paul and Anak Perelih on Vox Populi. I am just seriously p***ed off that once again the creeping Islamisation of our governance systems rears its ugly head. Religious zealots continue to hijack our lives here in Malaysia. If it wasn't because of a concerned doctor who personally knew the case and did extensive background research on this issue, we wouldn't have known about this ridiculous circular.

I call upon anyone who has access to this circular to share it with us on the Internet. It needs to be condemned.

I am now wondering how many children and their parents in Malaysia are now suffering in silence as a result of Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara's need to be moral guardians for Muslims. How many have 'Information not Available' on their birth certificate as a result of JPN clerks doing calculations as to when a husband and wife had sex?

I am a Muslim and I am sick and tired of supposedly secular bodies (i.e. JPN) acting as moral guardians for Muslims/Malays which is neither in their mandate nor responsibility given to them.

You might ask why only Malay Muslims? Because we are the only ones who can be inflicted on with this sort of thing by the powers that be with impunity. It will be argued (nah, it won't even be debated) that this is an Islamic related issue determined by people who know better. The non-Muslims will be told to not stick their noses in as this is a Malay Muslim issue, which is already happening.

A blogger by the name of Anak Perelih, commenting on this letter, has in fact stated that non-Muslims should not comment on issues which affect Muslims as it might be interpretated as meddling in Islamic affairs. Well, I am glad that my non-Muslim brothers and sisters are able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Muslims in fighting against actions which lack common sense, better judgement, dignity, and respect for the rights of children. I welcome their support any day.

But wait a minute. Does it not alarm anyone that this 'initiative' has come from the JPN, a non-Syariah government agency? Some senior civil servant who feels that he needs to be more religious has, with this action, practically decided that his department should be an extension of the Syariah system.

Let's not talk about the wali business as really no kadi has yet asked and demanded for the date of one's conceivement by one's parents to verify whether or not one's father is the legitimate wali. In this case, this action achieves nothing but violates a child's rights and inflicts pain and suffering on the parents.

A birth certificate that has "information not available" in place of a father is a dead giveaway and a recipe for stigma and discrimination which will be faced by the child for at least 12 years of his or her life if not more. This action is already being done for children born out of wedlock whose fathers cannot be identified. In this case, though the father is clearly identified and married to the mother, it appears that our 'moral guardians' must still insist extracting their pound of flesh.

I call on our Members in Parliament and the Minister of Home Affairs, Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar, to address this injustice. This discriminatory, judgemental, circular/ directive must be rejected/repealed.