I first met Josh Yeoh a number of years ago while living in Malaysia, but didn’t get to know the man until a recent trip (when I returned to the country to work on this project).  I had never spent much time before in a House of Prayer, but because of my friendship with Josh I had the opportunity to do the very thing in Penang.  The experiences were, personally, profound.  For many of us the concept of a building dedicated solely to prayer is foreign at very least.  If you have the fortune to visit the Penang House of Prayer, affectionately also known as PenHOP, you’re likely to see Mr. Yeoh sitting at the keys, playing, meditating, singing his heart out.

[Check out my Malaysian video interview with Josh about his previous album Is Anyone Out There]

Josh’s work and vocation give a glimpse, for me at least, into what the ancient ministers in the temple must have been like  – men like Asaph, appointed by Israel’s King David to continually sing before the ark of the covenant. Or maybe he is more like the man Annie Dillard describes in the incomparable Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the man “on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms, but with which he will not part.”

I was excited to learn that Josh recorded, and is about to release his second album, entitled In That Day.  I interviewed Josh via email, and he thoroughly typed out his thoughts on an iPad from Penang.

Andrew Kooman: I’ve only heard a brief tease of your upcoming album but in it I can hear it goes a very different direction from your previous one. Describe your new sound.

Josh Yeoh: You’re right. It’s pretty different. The first one was a snapshot of my personal journey with God and what He was doing in me at that point in time. It was singer-songwriter and probably more introspective. This upcoming album captures what my life has been like ever since He called me back to Malaysia to start the Penang House of Prayer . I think the message of the CD is what is burning with urgency on my heart. It’s the understanding that Jesus is coming back as a Bridegroom, King and Judge. He’s not just the little baby in the manger, or the dead man on the cross. He’s jealous and zealous for His Bride, the Church. And He will receive the reward of His suffering. I think this “new sound” you mentioned reflects the heart and message of the album. It’s definitely a bigger sound. And I was privileged to have some of my closest friends play on this album with me. And it reflects what happens on a daily basis in the Prayer Room at PenHOP (albeit a lot more rehearsed and with fewer mistakes!). This album is definitely more congregation-friendly. But there are still a couple tracks that are reminiscent of the first CD. Yep, I’m still Josh. I still have a soft spot for the piano and cello combo.

AK: Will you be touring the album or playing gigs? How can people connect to you live?

JY: There will be four release concerts this month in Penang. Three at local churches, and one an invite-only event at PenHOP, where many of the songs were birthed [details on the website]. My full-time vocation is with the House of Prayer, so any “gigs” I have will probably be tied into speaking engagements or worship leading. I’ll be in Australia and Singapore for a few weeks in January, in Sabah (East Malaysia) in February, and in Indonesia in May next year. No “gigs” lined up as of now, but who knows? I’ll be updating my ministry page on the website with my schedule, so that’s the best way to connect. It’s also the best way to invite me to minister, or speak, or sing, or for dinner.

AK: How would you say that have you grown and developed as an artist since your previous album?

JY: Man, you don’t ask easy questions, AK! Part of my job now involves me leading worship and intercession sets for many hours in a week. In addition I’m leading worship nearly every weekend, whether at FGA Center or at different ministry engagements. And a lot of what I do now in worship is spontaneous. So you could say that I’m always writing new songs. Some are sung only once, some I remember and flesh out into full songs. So I think I’ve grown in terms of songwriting. And also vocally. I’m learning to do things that I never did in my previous album.

I’ve also been involved in several collaborative projects in Malaysia: with Oops! Asia (my song “Relent” was featured on a compilation album) and with Malaysian Gospel Music (for the recently released “Adore” album, I recorded a revamped version of arguably the most popular Malaysian worship song, “Everytime I Pray” written by Pastor Wah Lok). So I’ve spent a lot more time in studios working with different producers and learning the tricks of the trade from them. You’ll notice what I call the “Josh choir” on some of the tracks in this new album. No, I didn’t have female backing vocalists. I also got to work with Sam who taught me a lot about recording.

AK: Who are some of your musical influences?

JY: I never know how to answer this, especially if I list influences that my album sounds nothing like. I literally just looked on my iPhone to see what is loaded, because what I listen to most probably is what influences me, right? By that logic, my musical influences are: Phil Wickham, Cory Asbury, Ben Woodward, Jon Foreman, Starfield, Audrey Assad and Sufjan Stevens. My music probably sounds nothing like some of them… but I really like their music.

AK: What was the process like to write these new songs? Where did they come from and why these songs now?

JY: The process was different for each. I never know what to say when people ask if I write the melody first or the lyric or both. Many of the songs were birthed spontaneously in the Prayer Room. “Song of the Lamb” for example, was birthed during a packed out Friday Night Burn set in our old place. I remember it being a very powerful time of worship and it was like we were standing before the throne of God, and I “heard” this refrain: “I can hear heaven’s symphony resounding in worship to the Lamb who was slain”. And we just started singing that over and over for a good 20 minutes. “There Will Be A Day / Garden” were both birthed when I was doing a devotional set (soaking type worship). It was just me at the keys and I think there were two other people in the room. And I was singing from Revelation 22, and all of a sudden started to sing this chorus: “There will be a day when you will wipe away every tear from our eyes”. And as I sang I suddenly became aware that the other two people were bawling their eyes out as they encountered God. Ironic? Or poignant.

AK: Why these songs now?

JY: Great question. It was right after we had wrapped up our 168 Hours of Prayer in June when I felt it was the right time to make this CD. Of course, I had an internal argument with God about this because this was also the height of busyness in my life. To add to the “pressure”, I felt like the deadline for the CD was to be in November. Which gave us about 3 months to pull everything together. Ridiculous. But I like your question because I did feel an urgency in my heart for these songs to be released. I think there is a message in each song — I joke that each song is really a sermon in disguise — and each is rooted in Scripture that I hope as people sing will reveal Jesus rightly and inspire worship, because I believe worship is really a response to the revelation of who He is! Also, I think I had read or heard someone say — I think it was Bill Johnson… and if it wasn’t, then it was me — that what we sing in worship often shapes our theology, and where we want the Church to be in five years is what we should be singing today. Ok, that was a poor paraphrase. But you get the idea.

AK: What’s your day-to-day life like? (A lot of people don’t know or haven’t experienced life at an “intercessory mission” like the Penang House of Prayer). Can you describe what PenHOP does and why you do what you do?

JY:In a nutshell, PenHOP’s vision is to establish a 24/7 House of Prayer for all nations in the spirit of the tabernacle of David that is a nexus of worship, intercession and missions. (I speak on this all the time and it usually takes a couple of hours, so summarizing is going to be… fun!) I believe PenHOP is called to exist with the Church and for the Church — like an engine room that powers what He is doing in the City, and like the tip of a spear that pierces and breaks through the new things. In this season, we are called to “Awaken the Bride” to intimacy, intercession and her inheritance in Jesus, and one of the ways we have been doing that is through our 30 Hour Prayer Weekends that we hold in a different church each month.

We really want to raise the water level of worship and intercession in the city of Penang. We also run internships a couple of times a year that have been really life-changing for a lot of people. And our strategy in this season is to “spark and strengthen” what He is doing in Malaysia and in the region, so we’ve been sending teams to various places to “deposit” the DNA of the House of Prayer wherever He leads us!

My day-to-day life involves leading worship and intercession, leading people, and drinking lots of coffee. I get to serve as Director at PenHOP and so I guess I end up “directing” a lot of what goes into achieving everything I described in the paragraph above. But definitely it involves a lot of coffee. And a lot of the Holy Spirit. And coffee.

AK: Why do prayer and music blend so well and why do you think people are drawn to your house of prayer?

JY: I think it’s because it’s how God likes to be worshiped. Look at what you see around the throne of God. It’s Revelation 5:8. It’s the harp AND the bowl. I was just reading the other day about how prayer is the full spectrum of human expressions to God (Bob Sorge) and that encapsulates worship, thanksgiving, intercession, confession, etc. So I really don’t see a division between prayer and worship/music. We have an entire book of prayers that were written to music — the Psalms. So really, I don’t think we are reinventing the wheel or anything. We’re just doing what always preceded revival and nation transformation.

What draws people to PenHOP, in a word… or in four words… The presence of God. If we don’t have His presence, we have nothing.

AK: I don’t know if you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, but it could be your autobiography. (Insert laughter here). You’re probably fast approaching 10,000 hours at the piano. How do you keep worship and intercession fresh?

JY: That awkward moment when I don’t know who you are referring to. But I just wikipedia-ed it and now I think I will need to get a copy for myself. Maybe as a Christmas gift. Funny story about the piano. My keyboard at home won’t turn on, I think something got fried. And the keyboard we bought for PenHOP just a few months ago — I think we may have broken the “A” key. So it makes obnoxiously loud noises every so often. Highly distracting. Ok, so that wasn’t a very funny story.

I think about the creatures around the throne whose primary function is to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. And if they never get bored and never cease to cry “Holy” because you can never really exhaust the revelation of God… I don’t see how worship and intercession could ever get stale, if it’s rooted in beholding Him, and not in what we can get out of worship for ourselves.

AK: I’m wondering what sort of cultural legacy you hope Penhop will leave in your part of the world?

JY: I got to ride in my aunt’s Prius recently and it occurred to me that this is what I want to see most of people who are a part of PenHOP. Because of the nexus of worship, intercession and missions, I want to see a “hybrid” where the answer to questions like: “Are you a worship leader, intercessor, or missionary?” is “Yes, yes and yes”. I would also love to say that we had a hand in raising the level of worship and intercession, calling a generation to wholehearted abandonment and consecration, and turning the hearts of the generations. Sounds like a lot, eh? And perhaps not what you were really asking…

AK: I’ve asked other musician friends recording albums about how they find and pursue an authentic voice and I wonder if it is especially challenging when dropping a worship CD. What, to you, is authentic worship and how do you gauge authenticity in your own life?

JY: When I talk to worship teams, I always tell them that greatness is established not on stage, but in the secret place. And I think that’s the key to authenticity. God brought (broke) me to the place where the cliche of “performing before the Audience of One” became reality. So the way I gauge is to determine if my secret place life with the Father and what I do on stage or when leading matches up.

##

Follow Josh: facebook | twitter | youtube

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Visit his official website: www.JoshuaOneEight.com

Read more of AK’s interviews with artists, activists and bold thinkers here.

from Disappointed by Hope - Photograph by Jonathan Kwok

The next group of Vietnamese detainees were more fortunate.  Ellen had tickets for ten of the eleven.  Seven men and three women.  The lone unfortunate was a few weeks away from being given the same good news.  Ellen tenderly touched his cheek and told him to be strong as he waited patiently for release.  A bittersweet moment to be sure.  The men were happy.  All of the men had been scooped up on a RELA raid, Malaysia’s citizen action group given the power to arrest and detain foreigners with irregular status, at a construction site a few weeks earlier.

The three women were a different story.  So young, children they seemed, two of them no older than sixteen.  All three from an area of the Mekong Delta, a triangulation of land where the countries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam meet.  A poor region with little work, a viable trade for many of the girls is prostitution.  Some arrive in Malaysia expecting work of another kind, only to find they’ve been duped and forced into the world of the sex trade.  Others come willingly to sell their bodies for sex and make more money then they ever could at home.  Two of the girls were disappointed to hear from Ellen they were leaving Malaysia.  They pleaded with her to let them stay, told her they wanted to remain in the centre where they made money as prostitutes.  The other girl seemed happy to go home.

The last visit we paid was to a young man who was marched like all the others, but on his own.  Handsome, young, he didn’t look a day over 18.  He had been detained for a number of weeks in the Detention Centre.   Ellen showed him the papers that had been sent to him from home.  Without any money and captured or arrested unexpectedly, most families of the men and women in detention have no knowledge their loved ones are detained.  One of the first things Ellen does when she meets detainees is give them money for a phone card so they can phone home, reconnect with their families, so the families can send papers from Vietnam in order to secure their release from detention and get a plane ticket home.

It’s a process that isn’t without bumps and obstacle.  Sometimes she works directly with the Embassy, sometimes she is in touch with the families in Vietnam.  Sometimes papers arrive in the mail to her home, and each visit to the Detention Centre Ellen brings what new information she has acquired and compares her records with whatever records the Immigration officers have of detainees.

Ellen had good news for the young man that day: a passport that had been sent from home. She had a plane ticket for him.  He would be leaving Malaysia! I watched the wave of relief wash over him, imagined how it must have felt to be so suddenly so close to seeing family again after a long, horrible ordeal.  Ellen tenderly wiped the tears that fell to his cheeks with her thumb and asked him if we could pray for him.  He had been terribly sick over the last few days, and the lymph nodes on his neck were quite swollen.  We laid hands on him and quietly prayed.

Described as “a siren call [that] will… forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting”

Photographs by Jonathan Kwok
Stories by Andrew Kooman
Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut

with a Foreword by Ambassador Dato’ Dennis Ignatius Former High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada
:: Buy Now ::

When I was in Kenya, I felt the presence of God in a similar way,  a heaviness that seemed to push me into the ground. God for whatever reason was suddenly very real and present in my wakened senses, a privileged moment when the veil or fog covering my eyes lifted and I could perceive somehow through the limited grid of my body that heaven was open and that its resources were available to us.  Words fail my limited faculties, fail to describe the holiness, the goodness of such a moment.  I can, at least, tell you what I prayed.  For healing in his body.  For courage to swell and conquer his heart.  That he would be a faithful shepherd that would feed and lead vulnerable sheep.  That he would be certain of the love of God.

Who am I, Lord, to pray such a prayer?  Who am I to touch the shackled hands, the swollen lymph nodes of Christ?  Who was this man, and who will say with certainty that he was not the most important person I will ever meet in my life?

His name?  Neither of us knows.  Ellen confided to me, outside the Detention Centre after we had driven along its southern border, the wheels of her car making a full revolution for each coil of barb wire that stretched along the top of the high security fence, that the name on the passport didn’t match the one he had give her on her previous visits.  I sat at the hawker stall where we ate lunch thinking about this.

The owner’s initial surprise that I, a white man, would eat in his restaurant in the small out-of-the-way town, was replaced by his surprise that I could order my food in Hokkien.  Whose passport did the young man have?  How did his family acquire it?  How to see the hundreds of thousands of stories of misplaced, stolen identity come to a tidy end?

Two young Burmese men ran around for the owner of the shop, bringing our drinks, our noodles, cleaning tables.  My hungry stomach so easily filled so near to where hundreds of men and women with uncertain fates tried to push away thoughts of the only consistent certainty in their wasting lives: hunger.  My own identity papers tucked neatly away in a pocket, hidden and safe, I quietly watched the young men serving us, and wondered how accessible their papers were to them.

© 2010 Andrew Kooman. All Rights Reserved.

##
In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia.  Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta.  Their stories were the basis for the new book Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published by YWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew’s personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia.  Some names and locations have been modified for reasons of confidentiality.

Read the other articles from the series:

Week 1: Refugees Hiding in the Jungle | Week 2: The Impossible Choices of Refugees |Week 3: Undocumented Workers Detained by Immigration | Week 4: The Horrible Drudgery of Detention

from Disappointed by Hope - Photograph by Jonathan Kwok

The first group of Vietnamese men marched from their block two by two.  Handcuffed in pairs, free arms holding the shoulder of the detainee in front of them, heads down.  They entered the small building, sat in two neat rows, cross legged, leaning against each other.  Seven in total.  They were all young.  Haggard and tired, sickly and pale, in detention already for about two months.  You could see it on each face.  Thin for not eating enough food, tired for not being able to sleep decently through the night, bored with another day of drudgery.

While many migrants come to the country with legitimate contracts and experience Malaysia as the country of opportunity for which they dreamed, many are not so fortunate.  Foreign workers are often promised contracts and working conditions in their home countries by various outsourcing agencies that have government contracts to supply migrant labor to a variety of Malaysian companies and individuals.

There’s a whole spectrum of agents who get migrants jobs and bring them into Malaysia.  Some good, some not who exploit workers intentionally, and who sell or traffick the unsuspecting worker for labor or for sex within the country.

Migrants are frequently cheated and used, and are especially vulnerable to exploitation.  Some are paid poorly with wages wrongfully or arbitrarily deducted from their salary by employers.  Others aren’t compensated for work-related injuries, which abound, especially in manufacturing jobs.  Some are not paid at all.  If they complain about mistreatment, employers are able to cancel their work permits and render them ‘undocumented.’  Without proper documentation, the foreign workers are subject to arrest, detention, and deportation.

These are typical stories repeated every day across the country.  Migrants who are mistreated in this way, if they seek justice through the legal system for their unfair treatment are required to pay RM 100 each month for a ‘Special Pass’ which grants them temporary legal immigration status.  Yet, with the ability to earn a wage stripped from them by their unjust employer, these migrants who seek resolution to their dispute cannot afford to remain in the country long enough to see the legal process through.  As a result, most migrant workers are forced to return to their home countries without completing their court cases or receiving compensation.

Although a terrible ordeal, migrants who are granted special passes and eventually leave the country without compensation are fortunate if they avoid arrest and detention.  Those migrants who are arrested are brought to one of the 13 Immigration Detention Centers like the facility I visited.

In theory, after 14 days of detention, arrested undocumented migrants are either released, or are sentenced to imprisonment, which often includes two to four strokes of the whip, an unimaginably painful corporal punishment I would learn about later in my trip through the first hand account of a friend.  Since the government introduced a policy of whipping for immigration offences in 2002, thousands of undocumented migrants have been whipped, a practice the Bar Council of Malaysia has condemned as degrading, cruel, and inhumane treatment that violates basic human rights.

Described as “a siren call [that] will… forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting”

Photographs by Jonathan Kwok
Stories by Andrew Kooman
Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut

with a Foreword by Ambassador Dato’ Dennis Ignatius Former High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada
:: Buy Now ::

Was one of the young men the boy Ellen told me about in the car, in the detention centre after wasting away in prison for two years? I am not certain.  The boy in question was arrested for stealing wan tan mee – a few kilograms of noodles from the hawker stall where he had worked.  Accused by an angry boss for a crime he did not commit, in a moment of anger he exchanged words with his boss who later filed a report with the police that landed him in jail for two years.  Unable to communicate in Bahasa, and given no translator, he simply was stuck in prison with no trial, until Ellen heard his case and with the little Vietnamese she knew was able to get him out of the prison.  Since his work visa expired while he was in jail, where he wasted two years of his life forgotten and alone, his papers had become outdated and he was, therefore, an illegal migrant and sent to a Detention Centre.  Men like this young man populate the centre we visited and the 12 other Immigration Detention Centres in Malaysia.

I sat close to the seven men, shook their hands, prayed for them under my breath as Ellen took what information she needed from them in order to get them out of detention.  The young man I spoke with, his English simple but clear, told me a little about life in the centre.  He talked with his hands, moving them with each word.  The first three fingers on his right hand cut off at the first knuckle.  The stubs tapped against the palm of my hand when we greeted each other.  A working accident he did not speak about.

Few of the men had blankets, and all of them had only one change of clothes: a pair of shorts or pants, a Tshirt, and underwear.  Not allowed cards, books, paper to write letters, they sat day after day with nothing to do, little to no contact with the outside world, parents, girlfriends, siblings or friends back home.  Sitting in their small enclosure waiting for who knows how long for who knows what to happen.  Hot and miserable throughout the humid days in their block, a roof over their heads but no walls.  Cold through the night lying on the cement floor in the dark with no bedding.

About one hundred men in their block and three toilets between them, their space crowded and uncomfortable, the cement slab they slept on, covered with the sweat and smells of the refuse of a hundred others whose stomachs growled in hunger, not filled by the one piece of roti they were issued for breakfast, the handful of rice at lunch, and the small bowl of rice with the finger-sized fish they were given at night.

I asked them what food I could buy them at the small canteen in the centre where visitors can purchase over-priced food for detainees.  Noodles, they said, and soda.  I bought bread, cake, cookies, hard candy and snacks.  The best RM 50 I have ever spent.

We said goodbye after Ellen and I prayed for them, in the open, in front of the Muslim guards, invoking the name of Christ and his God openly for all to hear and see, a thing some in the country would caution against.  The most honest words, perhaps, that I have ever prayed, however feeble and self-conscious under the guards’ bored and distracted eye.

Ellen later said she risked praying in such a way once, and has done so on every visit since, sometimes to her own derision.  In her opinion it is one of the most useful things she can do, a thing that encourages and strengthens the detainees.  We watched them march away, back to their block, back to the grinding and habitual boredom of another day in the centre.  None of these men were going home, but Ellen secured some necessary information.  Perhaps on her next visit, some of them would have a plane ticket in their hand.

To be continued next week…

© 2010 Andrew Kooman. All Rights Reserved.

##

Week 1: Refugees Hiding in the Jungle | Week 2: The Impossible Choices of Refugees |Week 3: Undocumented Workers Detained by Immigration | Week 4: The Horrible Drudgery of Detention
In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia.  Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta.  Their stories were the basis for the new book Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published by YWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew’s personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia.  Some names and locations have been modified for reasons of confidentiality.

Vietnamese Migrant, from Disappointed by Hope - Photograph by Jonathan Kwok

The Detention Centre we visited is tucked away in a small town, about an hour and a half drive from the main city where we met.  We drove through the rain, a down pour of tremendous rain drops that threw themselves against the windshield with incredible force.  Ellen drove her small Proton at a casual pace, not hurried and frantic like many of the other cars on the road earnest to arrive at their destination in record time.

As she drove we talked.  I peppered her with questions about the Detention Centres and her work ministering to Vietnamese workers who by some ironic twist of fate, or a bad decision, and usually because of forces outside their own power, arrive in Malaysia legally on contracts, but become illegal in the process.

Ellen owns a computer business and has spent a career in the technology sector.  She happened into the gritty and thankless work of helping migrant workers not so much by chance, but surely not with intention.  She met real people.  Heard real stories.  Responded as she could, with her own limited power and resources to help right wrongs, of which there are too many for her to address on her own, try as she now might.

Her vocation, if you call it that, takes up most of her time, requires most of her resource and strength, sees her bring young men – foreigners, criminals – into her home because they have no other place to go.  “The could kill me in the night, my husband too,” she retorted when I asked her about how safe she feels inviting strangers into her home.  “But they don’t.  I do what I think is right,” what must be done, what she as a Christian feels she cannot but do, “and trust God that he will protect me” if there is any real threat.

By the time we arrived at the Detention centre, the sky had cleared.  The grey, ominous clouds had rolled back and the sun shone on us as we walked to the gate.  Emblazoned on a red sign was a message that I understood very clearly, though I know hardly a word of Bahasa: “Kawasan Larangan,” and below the words the image of a stickman with a gun, shooting a running stickman in the back: “Restricted Area.”

We entered the Detention Centre on the wings of prayer, evidenced by the ease we had with the guards when we stepped to the guardhouse to show our passports and gain permission to enter the restricted area.  The Malay woman at the desk was pleasant, seemed happy, even, to see us.  When we were handed our ID passes and were returned our passports and told to go to the main office, Ellen whispered to me how pleasant the entrance was: on her frequent visits, sometimes it takes her a whole hour to be given the pass we were given in two minutes.

Ellen told me later that every entrance to the Detention Centre was unique.  A Chinese guard, a woman, pulled Ellen aside on a previous visit and told her the place was cursed.  The woman warned her not to pick any of the flowers so carefully kept in beds at the Detention Centre’s entrance, sure they would poison any household the flowers were brought to.  She asked Ellen if she too saw the unhomed dead, roaming restlessly in the spirit world all throughout the Detention centre.  Ellen did not.  Nor did I on our visit, a fact I am still thankful for to this day.  I do not doubt such things might be unfolding in the spiritual realm.  We both agreed how convenient it was not to see in such detail these things, how difficult such vision would make the practical work of meeting with detainees, buying food, and getting the information necessary to start or finish the work of securing identity papers so the detainees could go home.

Described as “a siren call [that] will… forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting”

Photographs by Jonathan Kwok
Stories by Andrew Kooman
Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut

with a Foreword by Ambassador Dato’ Dennis Ignatius Former High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada
:: Buy Now ::

The two of us walked together to the main office.  As we passed the first building, the doors were pushed open, and a Middle Eastern man emerged, handcuffed, wearing shirt and pants that were clean and white, presumably his own clothes.  Clean shaven with hair closely trimmed to his skull, he walked down a ramp followed by an official.  His deep-set eyes were serious.  He walked ahead of us to a series of large steel enclosures, like massive bird cages, in front of the main office.  An official opened the door for him and he joined four other men, also wearing their own clothing, where they sat in a neat row, cross-legged on the ground. Behind their cage another, with two lines of men quietly sitting in bright orange jumpsuits.  Men being processed into the Detention Centre watching the backs of those men, dressed again in their own clothes, on their way out.

The main office was filled with Malaysian Immigration officials smartly dressed in navy blue uniforms.  Woman in hajibs and men with shortly cut hair.  Clean and neat, sitting around each other’s desks, doing work but enjoying each other’s company.  I was surprised how casual the environment seemed, given the location the office was situated.  A large white board covered most of one wall with a grid describing the number of detainees in the centre, their nationality and gender.  I stood near the door while Ellen talked with different officials, showed them papers, checked over records and drew up the list of detainees from different blocs that we would meet.  I slipped outside to text the information on the whiteboard on my phone.

That morning the tally of detainees was 760 in total.  157 from Indonesia.  94 from Bangladesh.  42 from Vietmam, 18 of them women who had arrived that very morning.  Ellen told me later, when she asked to see them, the official she approached said, “Don’t touch them.”  And told her that the Syndicate would come later in the day or on the next to get them.  Brought to the country to work as prostitutes, we surmised, local crime lords had worked out some sort of agreement and were using the centre as a point of entry for their fresh new recruits, likely to end up in brothels or karaoke bars in spots all over the mainland.  397 of the detainees were from Myanmar, 148 of which were Rohingya.  7 Chinese, 4 Pakastanis, 3 Sri Lankans, 2 from Iraq, 2 Russians, and 2 Nigerians/ Africans.  These were the numbers and nationalities I was able to scribe onto my phone in haste.  Where the other 50 detainees were from I am not certain.

We walked to the small building where detainees are brought to meet visitors.  The room was a simple construct.  Divided in the middle by a room of booths with glass fronts with small holes cut in the glass, presumably the area designated for visitation.  The groups we were to see, however, were too large, and so we sat on the floor, against the south most wall, in front of the desk where three Immigration officials, who looked fresh out of high school, sat and administrated the visits, checked our ID, told detainees where to stand, smiled at me, the foreigner, ate potato chips and tapped out texts on their flashy cell phones.

To be continued next week…

© 2010 Andrew Kooman. All Rights Reserved.

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In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia.  Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta.  Their stories were the basis for the new book Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published by YWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew’s personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia.  Some names and locations have been modified for reasons of confidentiality.

Rohingya Refugees in Malaysia - Photograph by Jonathan Kwok

Change Noor’s name – he has done so himself – to another.  Make it Hashim, or Ishmael.  The names change but the stories have similar strands.  Yet the threads that tie the stories together are not rich in hue: golds, emeralds, reds, weaving together a beautiful coat of colour.  They are more like the clear and tough fishing line one might use, out of desperation, to sew together a raw and open wound torn into the flesh by blow after blow from the butt of a pistol, or cut into skin and muscle by the blade of a knife, sure to leave an unsightly scar.

Noor was fortunate enough to have money demanded of him by members of a crime syndicate when he was sold by a trafficker on the Thai border.  He had been rounded up during a raid, put in a Malaysian detention centre holding illegal migrants after his arrest, and sat in the jungle heat for weeks.  Some of the other men, like him sold to the syndicate, weren’t so lucky.  Had no money at all.  And after phone calls to what friends they had in Malaysia, or back home in Burma, or to Bangladesh, when they still were unable to come up with funds – RM 1600, about 500 USD, to pay the men who now owned them for freedom – the pistol whipping, the cutting, the punches and bruising ensued.  But no matter how hard they punched, their opened veins would not produce the funds.  If you prick a refugee, does he not bleed blood?  Their screams will never produce gold or other precious metals.  If it were so, what a commodity their suffering.

Noor had RM 2000, so he could buy his freedom from the syndicate, and passage back into Malaysia.  With the other RM 400 he bought some food for the men he was leaving behind, men who were sure to be sent to remote fishing communities to work on boats, perhaps never to return.

He had already paid the money and was waiting in the makeshift camp the traffickers assembled near the border, waiting to enter Malaysia at night secretly.  But that night the police raided. Noor ran like everyone else, in one of a thousand directions, and escaped.  Hid away.  When it was safe, he found his own way back into the country.  Came to Penang and the jungle on whose fringes we spoke.

* * *

My arrival in the country was a much different flight.  Over land and sea in a jet.  My legs occasionally cramped I found it difficult to sleep over the ten hour flight before I slept the night in a hotel for my layover in Taipei, before I made the final flight to Malaysia. Upon arrival in Penang, I handed my Canadian-issued passport to the smiling woman at the Immigration desk who welcomed me into the country after we chatted about local food.  No bribes, no sneaking, no ducking or running through thick jungle at night.  And yet my travels took their own amount of faith.  Traveling to a foreign country for an extended period of time, a habit from which I hope to never recover, requires much from the traveler, no matter who they are and where they go: time, money, separations from, preparations.

But to leave your country running, without documentation?  Travel out of your country and suddenly the passport you so easily hide away in the drawer in your room and forget about, thinking nothing of its security in the insulated walls of your carpeted home where you eat and drink, make love, watch TV, the passport you have to search for when you’re booking your plane ticket online, muttering in frustration, suddenly that passport is everything.  You know its whereabouts at all times.  It gets zipped in hidden pockets, tethered round your neck, pressed against your skin.  It is connected to you and at all times is within hand’s reach.  Leashed.

Described as “a siren call [that] will… forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting”

Photographs by Jonathan Kwok
Stories by Andrew Kooman
Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut

with a Foreword by Ambassador Dato’ Dennis Ignatius Former High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada
:: Buy Now ::

When you are away you are where you are from.  The small little book, with the alpha-numeric code above that horrid photograph printed on the glossy page is your identity.  You are your passport.  And you will either receive the stamp of approval or you will not.

To be without passport, without documentation is tantamount to being without identity.  This is the jagged little pill the fifteen million refugees worldwide (and counting) have to swallow.  The stunning slap against the skin tens of thousands of refugees in Malaysia, unlucky enough to be where they are from, without papers, feel when they arrive in the country, their safe haven, only to discover they are granted no official status.

***

The reality of Rohingya refugees is particularly dire, the story of a national identity stolen by those who ruthlessly wield power.  When it came to rule in 1974, the military junta in Burma denied citizenship to the Rohingya and declared them stateless.  Only, the declaration was no empty word, no abstract initiative set forth by a democratic figurehead whose impact or reach could not be quantified.  The brutal dictates of the junta made incarnate their words with radical policies that have affected the Rohingya for 30 years.   As a result scores of Rohingya have fled the country.  With taxes on most goods and services, a ban of the Rohingya language, confiscation of land and property, forced labor, and systematic religious persecution it’s no wonder.

Worse yet is the violence.  Summary executions, torture, and systematic rape widely reported by organizations like Amnesty International led to waves of Rohingya fleeing the country.  A campaign of concentrated violence saw an estimated 250,000 Rohingya flee to neighboring Bangladesh during 1991 – 1992 alone. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are upwards of 730,000 stateless persons, mostly Rohingya, and some estimate there are 1.5 million Rohingya refugees displaced outside Burma’s borders.

When the country you’ve lived your whole life – for generations – suddenly denies you are its son, strips you of your dignity but also confiscates any legal documentation of your national identity and then flushes you like refuse from its borders, there are sure to be challenges ahead.  For one, you can’t book a plane ticket to safer lands, layover in Taipei, or engage in small talk with a customs agents about local cuisine.

The realities of extortion, bribery, imprisonment, and rape do not only linger as horrific memories of once terrible times, but become omens of the future, signposts in a unending journey of misery more likely to appear on the horizon than if you have a stamped, current passport, unflattering photograph and all.

And the question about where to go to, what border to cross, is no matter to take lightly either.  Want to risk frequent extortion, malnutrition, and squalor living conditions that may require you to sell your body in order to get food?  Head to Bangladesh to a refugee camp.  Want to risk a trip over water at night in a rickety boat with the possibility that the navy will scoop you from the sea and force you to return to the very country you flee as a refugee?  Go to Thailand.  Such future sufferings aren’t the rule, but neither are they the exception.

Many Rohingya have also fled to Malaysia where, like Noor, they hide in the jungle, work for months as labourers whose bosses don’t pay up, simply because they know the undocumented migrants can make no case against them in a court of law.  Having not signed the United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the Malaysian government grants no legal status to legitimate refugees like the Rohingya when they arrive in Malaysia.  An unpaying boss can simply say, “You shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”  With no legal status, a trip to Malaysia means the possibility of arrest, detention, and deportation, which is the government’s official policy toward all undocumented migrants.

Choosing a new country, for many refugees, might seem a dangerous game of roulette.  But most often the violence they might face in their country of refuge is perpetrated by scoundrels and is not endorsed by the state.  And there are ways to hide, cracks to slip through and into, and for now, any country other than Burma, for a Rohingya, is a better country.

© 2010 Andrew Kooman. All Rights Reserved.

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Read the other articles from the series:

Week 1: Refugees Hiding in the Jungle

In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia.  Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta.  Their stories were the basis for the new book Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published by YWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew’s personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia.

For excellent research and documentation on the reality of refugees, internally displaced and stateless peoples, visit the UNHCR’s statistics page.

Rohingya Refugee, Malaysia - Photo by Jonathan Kwok

He had no reason to lie to us.  The tears on his face said it all.  They appeared suddenly, streamed clear lines on his dark skin.  The first, the only tears I saw during my time meeting with refugees in Malaysia, listening to their stories of survival, of exile, of suffering and displacement.  Tears precious to me.  I wish I could have collected them in the palm of my hand or in a small vile that I could seal with a lid, bring back with me to Canada to show you.  Perhaps we could have found a seed or a small sapling to plant in the ground once the snow melts.  Break open the vile of tears to water the soil.  A single tear enough to grow a whole tree, the kind of nourishment that only comes with suffering.

We met Noor mid-afternoon, after the heat of the day had reached its peak and the humidity had rolled out like a large cloud, invisible but heavy, covering everything with its weight and presence.  We wanted to walk with him out into the jungle, deep into the trees where his small community of 55 people, mostly men, live in huts made carefully out of tree branches and plastic bags, cardboard, garbage, whatever things you use to make shelters out of when you hide away in the jungle.

But we didn’t go with him to see the community because it was not safe.  The police were raiding their makeshift village over the last few days as police in Malaysia must do when local residents complain about illegal aliens in the area.

So we sat with him, the six of us, in a quiet restaurant at the bottom of an apartment building on a block of concrete lined by green. Vegetation in Malaysia is vibrant and alive.  Turn your back on it for only a moment and it grows, jealous and hungry trees stretch out their limbs, vines creep and advance toward the edges of all things.  But there we sat, on the edge of the jungle we could not enter for fear of the police, though at any moment it seemed the jungle would advance on us, so both parties might have their wish.

I asked questions which Stanley, the aid worker from a local Catholic parish relayed to Noor in Bahasa.  His story came in pieces, was interrupted by memory that covered his soft features in shadow, and interjections from the other parishioners who had joined us to assess the needs of the community. By his tears.

Noor is a Rohingya, a Muslim from Burma, one of the millions of people suddenly stateless and internally displaced when the government announced in 1982 that the Rohingya were no longer citizens in the country where they had always lived.  The policy that made them a stateless people was the first of many injustices that would lead to the exodus of millions of Rohingya from Burma over the subsequent decades.

Noor left with his family the following year, in 1983, and like so many others, went to Bangladesh.  Only thirteen years old at the time, with his whole life ahead of him, little did he know he would spend the next fourteen years in a refugee camp and be witness to horrors, both small and great.

Described as “a siren call [that] will… forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting”

Photographs by Jonathan Kwok
Stories by Andrew Kooman
Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut

with a Foreword by Ambassador Dato’ Dennis Ignatius Former High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada
:: Buy Now ::

Quietly, in a near whisper, Noor recounted the story of his imprisonment, seven years of jail in Bangladesh.  A girl in the camp, beautiful and young, only eleven years old, was raped and killed by a group of worthless local men.  It’s the kind of thing that happens to refugees.  To women.  To girls.  Helpless and displaced.  The violence against the young woman one injustice among countless others that occurred in the camp.  The community Noor was apart of had been ambushed and mistreated by locals many times and it was all too much.  Noor went and spoke to the officers who had authority in the camp.  The community was furious that the perpetrators of the crime against their innocent daughter had not been brought to justice and that no legal process was underway.

When Noor had spoken his mind and left, after vocalizing his anger, after speaking up for his community, he was accosted by junior officers, severely beaten and thrown into jail.  There was no trial.  There was no accusation.  Only a clear message from the powers that be that it was better for him and his community to keep the collective mouth shut.

And there Noor stayed.  In jail.  For Seven years until he somehow he escaped, fled to Malaysia.

Like a puzzle spilled out on a table top, many of the pieces of his story are disconnected for me, flipped over.  The border is framed and I have a sense of the greater picture, enough of the context to understand the scope of his suffering. I am unable to connect it all and can only imagine the bits in between.  Limited by language, by the short time we had, these are the pieces of his story I was given.

Stanley and Noor had a long conversation in Bahasa about life in the camp.  The others, all Malaysians, leaned into the table in silence.  Occasionally shaking their heads in disbelief, looks of surprise on their faces.  Stanley did not repeat it all, did not want to, his own heart raw and exposed, filled with enough of its own sadness, after learning only hours earlier that the nephew his family eagerly expected, died days before birth in his mother’s womb.  But I could tell they were talking about the different ways refugees in the camp in Bangladesh died at the hand of cruel men.  As he spoke, Noor extended his hands, shaped them into the shapes of guns and knives, grabbed at his abdomen, sliced at his own limbs as he described the violence.

The tears trailed across Noor’s face, wove quietly into his narrative when he told us that his family – siblings, a mother, and two sons – were still in the camp. In this place where horrors were not only conveyed in dreams of the night.  In this place that he fled.  Still living, forever just sitting there, away from their country and, worse, away from him.  His wife had run.  He had no knowledge of her whereabouts.

If the stories themselves, the experience of sitting with this man was not surreal enough already, his mobile phone which rang mid-conversation, would underscore that the experience of refugees is impossible – anything can happen and does.  On the other end of the phone conversation was one of Noor’s sons, calling to say hello to the father he had not seen for five years from the Bangladeshi refugee camp.  Just like that, even as we spoke of his family.  The pride in his eyes accentuated by Noor’s beaming smile as he handed me the phone and explained to me through Stanley that his son wished to talk with me, to practice the English he was learning in the camp.  I obliged and had a nice short conversation, my index finger jammed into my ear so I could hear across the ocean the young boy’s clear, enthusiastic voice shape crisp words of English.  Hello.  How Are You?  How Old? What Is Your Name? And me?  Well, what else to talk about but European football.  Where I come from.  Wish him well and compliment his fantastic English.

But don’t learn the language too well, dear child, the prayer I now pray, fervently, after learning the fate of one young boy in the same camp. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, wanting to have a sense from refugees within the camp about their conditions, had given a phone to a young boy with good English, and would receive reports from him in secret. And camp officials found out.  Why the UN officials snuck a phone to the boy I cannot say.  Who the men were who caught the boy and what authority they had and still have I do not know either, but what is clear is that they were men who held the power of life and death in their hands.  And it was those hands that grabbed the young boy by the ankles when they found the phone, when they discovered what he was doing.  Grabbed him by the ankles and swung him around and around in the air.  Like a rag doll.  Swung him fast and high, bashed his head into trees, against walls.  A young boy!  A life!  A human being!  Swung him about until he was dead.

So don’t learn your English too well, dear boy, refugee child of a refugee who, from the look of things, always will be.

Are any of these stories the truth?  All I can say, with tears, is: I hope not.  I want them to be lies.  All of them.  If only they were lies.

© 2010 Andrew Kooman.  All Rights Reserved.

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The above reflection was featured in EyeSee Magazine.

In 2009 Andrew visited Malaysia and met with migrants and refugees from around South East Asia to hear their stories about their life in Malaysia.  Many of the accounts were told by Burmese refugees fleeing the junta.  Their stories were the basis for the new book Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of a Better Country published by YWAM Penang and Raise Their Voice to highlight the plight of displaced and undocumented migrants.

The above account is a portion of Andrew’s personal reflections on his experience in Malaysia.

And the winners are:

Thanks to everyone who entered.  I had entrants from Malaysia, Europe, Canada, and the USA!

Just because you didn’t win, doesn’t mean you can’t have your own copy.  Order your own copy of Disappointed by Hope today!

I don’t want anyone to feel left out or go home empty handed.

SUMMER READING SALE:

Save $5 by ordering Ten Silver Coins: The Drylings of Acchora on my site (Was $15.99 – NOW $10.99)

Save 50% when you purchase the TSC ebook: get the code here! (Was $9.99 – NOW $4.99)

Download my award winning short story Nazar here for FREE!

You set the price on my Reflections from Africa: Remembering Names.

Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of A Better Country examines the plight of refugees and migrant workers in Malaysia through photographs and stories based on case studies and interviews with transients who have experienced abuse.

Disappointed by Hope

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Jun 18, 2010 – Experts estimate there are between 1-2 million undocumented workers in Malaysia.  While many migrants come to the country with legitimate work permits, many are not so fortunate.  Foreign workers are often promised contracts in their home countries by various outsourcing agencies.  When they arrive in the country many are not given promised wages, have their contracts breached, and in some cases unsuspecting workers are trafficked for labor or for sex within the country.

Disappointed by Hope: Migrants and Refugees in Search of A Better Country is a new publication that explores the realities faced by many foreigners seeking labor or refuge within Malaysia. The book focuses on 26 specific issues and is based on case studies, actual accounts, and interviews with foreigners in Malaysia who have been trafficked for sex, deported, arrested, detained in Immigration Detention Centers, cheated, or who have fled violence and persecution in their country as legitimate refugees only to be granted no legal status by the Malaysian government.

The book features stunning images from Malaysian photographer Jonathan Kwok, Reflections by Melanie Hurlbut, and original short stories by Canadian writer Andrew Kooman. Former High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada Dato’ Dennis Ignatius writes in the book’s foreword that Disappointed by Hope is “a siren call to … forever take from us our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting migrants.”

Disappointed by Hope is being released on 19 June, 2010, on the eve of World Refugee Day in Penang, Malaysia at 8 PM at the Penang House of Prayer (PenHOP). The book is published by Youth With A Mission Penang, which has a number of initiatives among migrants, refugees, and the urban poor in Malaysia, and Raise Their Voice Against Injustice, a society in Canada that addresses justice issues through story. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go toward establishing a school for the urban poor in Penang, Malaysia.

The book is available at www.raisetheirvoice.com and www.ywampenang.org.

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About Raise Their Voice:
Raise Their Voice Against Injustice (RTV) is an official society in Canada. It exists to creatively and effectively address issues of global injustice. Based in Red Deer, Alberta, RTV has done work in television, documentary and feature film, and gives its strength to tell stories that capture the imagination of the heart on the page and for the stage — stories that affirm the value and dignity of the whole person.

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Check out this great write up about yours truly, Ten Silver Coins: The Drylings of Acchora, and the forthcoming Disappointed by Hope at sbsinternational.org

It’s been a few weeks since I documented some of the dishes I’ve had the exquisite privilege of indulging in while in Penang.

Beef Kway Teow Soup from the Penang White Coffee Shop in Georgetown, Penang White Coffee (from the same place… go figure, right?).

Banana Leaf from Arati’s (Complete with Pappadam and Kopi Ais).

Masala Thosai for breakfast, accentuated with a warm cup of Teh Tarik.

Sushi of all sorts, but I’m digging, especially, the tuna and salmon varieties.  With green tea, hot and cold.

note: click the photographs to visit the sites the images belong to.