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(In Search of Shelter)
Civil unrest and military persecution by the junta government

has forced hundreds of thousands of Myanmarese to flee from their homeland.

Most of them are from the seven ethnic states.

They end up as asylum seekers in neighboring Thailand and Malaysia.

We are just tribal people and we have very, very low culture and education.

And the big issue is the discrimination from the government,

And we, Chin, we face many situations of hard labour and forced labour.

There are 100,000 asylum seekers in Malaysia, but only 40 percent of them are registered under UNHCR.

More and more come in to Malaysia each day.

Students who do not have the UNHCR card...

the first issue will be security problems when they come to school and in between.

But I don't mean the very small kids.

Those who are around 13, 14, 16 years old, many times they've gotten arrested.

The second issue for those who don't have their UNHCR card...

they cannot get exam recognition from the government and they cannot even enter university and all.

There are 390 students currently.

And this class in the youngest class, the pre-school.

We have approximately only 40% of students from 390 registered with UNHCR.

The rest are undocumented children who are staying with their parents or they are alone.

There are only 10 teachers who got registered with UNHCR.

And the rest of the 20 teachers are not registered with UNHCR.

Last month, we had three teachers who got arrested by the police.

And we had to release them by using over 2000 ringgit,

to release (them) from the police.

Those who are holding the Kachin community card, who face severe sickness,

like kidney operations and like those who are having baby delivery operations,

and like breast cancer.

And in those cases, we don't have the finances to support.

If they get UN registration, that'll be better for them to get admitted to hospital or to be cured.

Because they're going to get a 15% discount.

Most of the women have family. And now 20 women are pregnant.

So that's a problem.

Women also have no chance to work outside, so that's a little bit of a problem here.

Because of their illegal status in Malaysia, they have no protection from the law.

And refugees become easy targets for all forms of exploitation.

Asylum seekers in Malaysia face tremendous daily survival problems.

They also have to cope with job insecurity, accommodation problems and personal security.

Yes, there are a lot of problems, but one of the (main) problems is with the UNHCR.

And the other problems like health, education,

And employment, security, detention, arrest.

All of that stuff is derived from there.

If a member is not registered with UNHCR, it would be very difficult for them to work or go to the hospital,

to study, all of these problems are derived from being not registered with the UNHCR.