Lawyers slam Hannah Yeoh's 'tone-deaf' praise for Saifuddin amid outrage over citizenship scandal

2 days ago

Lawyers slam Hannah Yeoh's 'tone-deaf' praise for Saifuddin amid outrage over citizenship scandal

A prominent lawyers' group that has been fighting for the rights of thousands of youths deserving Malaysian citizenship has slammed Hannah Yeoh, calling the DAP leader "tone-deaf" for praising Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution, who is currently at the centre of a citizenship scandal that has attracted global headlines.

Yeoh recently defended Saifuddin amid public outrage over the express approval of Malaysian citizenship for seven Harimau Malaya players, which football governing body FIFA has since established as fraudulent after it was found that forged documents were used in their naturalisation.

"To my knowledge, no home minister has shown the same level of compassion and efficiency as Saifuddin Nasution," said Yeoh, the youth and sports minister, after her 2022 social media post resurfaced in which she questioned the easy approval of citizenship for footballers while thousands struggled with statelessness.

But Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) reminded that under Saifuddin, the government had attempted to pass "the most regressive" constitutional amendments that would have worsened the problem of statelessness, adding that new cases of statelessness were being created.

"The only 'compassion' and 'efficiency', as claimed by Hannah, that the public can see from Saifuddin seems to be reserved for the seven football players," said LFL director Zaid Malek.

He said the timing of Yeoh's statement was "shocking and embarrassing", adding that "double standards and hypocrisy are clear for all to see".

"This tone-deaf statement by the minister does nothing to assuage public discontent and anger against the government over the grant of citizenship to the seven football players with heritage claims that were found by FIFA to be false," said Zaid.

On Oct 6, FIFA revealed evidence that forged documents were used in naturalising the seven players as Malaysian citizens, following outrage from the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) over fines imposed on it as well as a ban on the players two weeks earlier.

FIFA also made the shocking revelation that the National Registration Department (JPN) never received the original birth certificates, which FIFA has since found.

"Instead, the NRD issued its own copies based on secondary information and foreign documents from Argentina, Brazil, and Spain," said deputy chairman of the FIFA disciplinary committee Jorge Palacio.

The issue has quickly spiralled into one of the biggest scandals facing Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's government since he took power following a hung parliament in the 2022 elections.

Zaid meanwhile took Hannah to task for her claim that Saifuddin had cleared 49,000 backlog citizenship applications.

"However, she stopped short of saying how many qualified stateless persons still remain without citizenship. The number of backlog applications cleared does not reflect the large numbers of desperate people out there who remain stateless, including thousands of school-going children."

He said authorities have so far ignored landmark judgments of former chief justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, including a directive that NRD abide by the constitution by not demanding additional requirements from stateless persons who are eligible to become citizens by operation of law.

"It is important to remember that many of those who became stateless did so due to the failure of the NRD and the home ministry to recognise their Malaysian citizenship under the constitution. In other words, citing the number of cleared backlogs is meaningless," Zaid added.

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