Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
On the 5th of August 2022, two of the three judges hearing the case in the Court of Appeal decided that children born to Malaysian mothers abroad can be denied citizenship by operation of the law. This means a lack of equal rights for women, and for some Malaysian children. We are victims of institutionalized and legalized sexism.
I write this, as a Malaysian woman, and wife. But I write this first as a wronged Malaysian mother. My own country punished me and continues to punish my children, because I fell in love, married, and had children outside of Malaysia.
My life moved forward overseas
In many ways, life for me began when I completed my AUSMAT and then went to Australia to do my degree. I experienced all those aspects of life overseas, including love, and then romance. I met someone, fell in love, and decided I would be staying in the land-down-under.
Life went on. I earned my degree, then proceeded to get myself a job, a husband, a son, my master’s, and then my daughter. Life continued and apart from a few downs, it was pretty great.
Then… in 2018, I felt a calling. Some part of me, my soul or some such thing, had decided that it was time for me and my family to come home. I made phone calls, enquired, stood in line, and then… discovered that my children are not Malaysian.
Malaysia didn’t move forward at all
Malaysia strives to be a modern, moderate, developed nation. It’s been five years of waiting, prayer, frustration, and aggravation since I first filled all the necessary documentation and paperwork
For some archaic, asinine reason, my children are not Malaysian. My children who have Malaysian blood and ancestry cannot live, study or work here without a Visa, because of who (and what) their father is: A Mat Salleh.
Men versus Women Rights
Why are Malaysian men free to love and marry a foreign woman and have their children hold Malaysian citizenship automatically? His children get that citizenship, automatically, anywhere in the world!
For me? The Malaysian woman who married an Australian man, with a son born in Perth, and another child born in Melbourne? Denied. Automatically. It happened so fast, with speed and efficiency that I have never encountered from a government office since that painful day.
It’s sexist. It’s misogynistic. It’s the Malaysian way.
Malaysia ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1995. The constitution was amended in 2001 to incorporate the principle of gender equality.
Yet Malaysia, is somehow, still one of a handful of countries that does not allow Malaysian women to pass on Malaysian nationality and citizenship. Nobody can explain to me WHY the father has such power or priority.
Is there some inherent flaw that this is supposed to protect the nation from? Why did the government of Malaysia, represented in court by the Home Ministry, literally appeal against the High Court’s 2021 decision that put an end to this insanity? For the shortest of periods, I had hope. I asked, and I followed up. I was patient.
For my children, the only path is Article 15(2) of the constitution which allows anyone under the age of 21, with a Malaysian parent to apply for citizenship. Why is moderate, modern Malaysia forcing some of its sons and daughters to jump through hoops for something over 100 countries simply GIVE?!
It’s not even a guarantee because it is granted at the discretion of the Home Ministry! I don’t understand any of this and there is longer hope for me, or for the other mothers and families being torn apart.
Talk only, no action
Malaysian society talks a lot about the importance of family, of how the family is the foundation of the nation, and such. I cannot describe the pain, and the hurt of the hypocrisy in these statements made by celebrities, government officials, and laymen on the street.
My half-Malaysian son and daughter need passports and a tourist visa to visit their cousins, aunties, and uncles. Their Malaysian family.
Understand that I wanted to emigrate home with my family. So that my children could get to experience their “kampung” complete with Teh Tarik, Nasi Lemak with the thrill of the Lion Dance, the lights of Thaipusam, and the food of the Ramadhan Bazaars.
It’s never going to happen because there’s only so much you can do on a 90-day tourist visa, and so many times a year that I can afford to fly me and my children forward and backward.
Why should I have to “try?” and keep trying?
I want to come home to Malaysia but I also want my family to come with me. Home is where the heart is after all. Show me one woman who does not find that her heart is with their children, and I will show you a woman who is not a mother.
I applied and waited six months, and then waited for six more. Then waited some more. It’s been almost five years now. And others have been waiting even longer. None of us should be waiting to have something that should be ours by right, by law, and by the power of common sense.
The children are the ones who suffer most.
Why do Malaysian women, and by extension the next generation of Malaysian sons and daughters of mixed parentage be the ones to suffer? It’s not fair, it’s not right. It’s fundamentally wrong on so many levels. And nothing hurts a mother more than hurting their child.
I am a mother who has been forced to watch my children grow up without a sense of Malaysian identity. Forced to grow up without those close bonds of family, support, and love for that extended network. It was something I grew up with. It is something I still want my children to have.
Forgotten, Abandoned.
A nation that can so simply turn its back to and abandon its daughters, can and will also be the nation to forget its sons. Eventually. This is not what a country, a nation, or its government should be doing to its own people, but it is happening.
This is the way of things: Malaysia will forever be my kampung, but never be a home to my family.
I wonder whether my husband’s nation, where I have a home and family, would welcome me the way I had hoped Malaysia would welcome mine.
Source – https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg9R_T9phx-/?hl=en
Know anyone with an interesting story to share? Drop us an email at hello@inreallife.my and we may feature the story!
For more stories like this, read:
Does It Matter Where I Was Born? – Malaysians Abroad On Where They’re From vs Who They Are Now
3 Malaysians Reveal the Dark Side of Studying Abroad That No One Really Talks About
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