Suhakam alarmed by Sabah government's stance on controversial citizenship changes

The government's Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) has expressed shock at at a call to exempt Sabah from Putrajaya's controversial constitutional amendments, which critics had warned would leave tens of thousands of people stateless.

This came after Sabah Deputy Chief Minister I Jeffrey Kitingan said the state wanted to be exempted from the amendments to protect its interests.

Suhakam recalled the provision of Article 161E, which requires Sabah and Sarawak to agree to any amendment to citizenship clauses in the constitution.

"The abrupt development signalled the disarray of the government in the preparation of this bill," said Suhakam, urging the government to "seriously reconsider" the amendments.

Under the proposed amendments condemned by rights groups, the government is seeking to change the granting of automatic citizenship by "operation of law" to "registration", which essentially removes the constitutional protection for foundlings and abandoned children, as well as children born out of wedlock and adopted and abandoned stateless children, including from Orang Asli communities.

Critics said Malaysia was moving backwards internationally as two-thirds of the 193 UN member states, including those in the Middle East and Asean, currently grant automatic citizenship to children with unknown parentage or unclear details of birth.

The changes, which require two-thirds support from MPs, were bundled with the much-welcomed constitutional amendment giving Malaysian mothers married to foreigners equal rights when it comes to automatic citizenship for their children born abroad.

Suhakam said citizenship rights were entrenched in the constitution by the country's founding fathers, adding that the government should instead enhance them.

"It remains our concern that the removal of the right to automatic citizenship of children born to permanent citizens would only exacerbate the problem of statelessness," it said.

Suhakam said statelessness in Malaysia "did not happen in a vacuum nor it is accidental".

"It reflects and exposes the perpetual creation of statelessness in our public service delivery for decades. It is clear that an overhaul reform is necessitated with urgency and good faith to fix the broken system."

While it welcomed the extension of equal rights to Malaysian mothers, Suhakam said the law should be applied retrospectively to help those born after September 2001.

"The constitutional amendment of Article 8 in 2001 guarantees equal treatment for both genders before the law and the retrospectivity will not only level up the past inequality for the affected Malaysian women and but also remedy the unfairness to the said children who should have been entitled to automatic citizenship had their mothers not been discriminated."