‘We wondered who they were’
SAD: Imam of local mosque recalls encounters with migrants
WANG KELIAN: MANY of the “imprisoned” migrants who called the hills of Wang Burma their home, were often spotted in town for prayers, says an imam of the only mosque here. Rais Ismail, imam of the Nurul Husna Mosque, said he last spotted the migrants coming for Maghrib prayers in January.
“They would come daily. Some of the congregation often wondered, who these people were and why they were so skinny?
“They could not say anything in Malay, but they could recite the al-Fatihah.
“In the spirit of brotherhood, some of the congregation members offered them new clothes and food,” he said. Rais said the men, usually in pairs or fours, would only attend the Maghrib and Isyak prayers, as the Immigration officers would have “gone back” by then. He said a large group of them would often come down for terawih prayers during Ramadan as well as to eat.
“Once, when I was going for my Subuh (pre-dawn) prayers, I was shocked to find these men walking through a nearby rubber estate.
“I stopped and had asked them where they were headed to, but they could not answer me in Malay. “They spoke in a foreign language,” said the 66-year-old Wang Kelian native.
Rais, a father of four, lives in a kampung house bordered by padi fields and surrounded by the scenic hills, of Bukit Wang Burma and Bukit Penangin. He, along with 200 over villagers in Wang Kelian, were in the spotlight over claims that they were in cahoots with traffickers.
“To say the villagers are involved, it is impossible. We do not know what is going on up there.
“I also do not think that the police are involved. It is just my gut feeling.” Rais, however, felt that the discovery of burial plots at some 600 metres above on the hill were shocking.
“Graves? Mashallah, this is scary. We held a prayer for those who had passed on and also for those at sea,” he said. Rais described the migrants’ desperate attempts to encroach the borders through Wang Kelian as futile, describing it as the “worst way to do so”.
“The terrain is so rough even the locals do not dare go up there. I pity the migrants,” he said. To curb human smuggling, Rais suggested the revival of a hill trekking competition so that close watch can be kept on the hills.
“In the 1970s, we had such competitions and cash prizes awaited those who could trek to the highest point.
“Back then, we had to contend with tigers and apes, but today, I think there are not as many wild animals,” he said. After two weeks of combing through a 50km stretch near the Malaysia-Thai border in Perlis, police found burial plots and migrant camps on the higher contours of Bukit Wang Burma.
The hill is part of a 98km-long Nakawan hill range. Police learnt of the existence of the camps where traffickers detained large groups of migrants, but could not pinpoint the exact location until the recent discovery in Thailand.
