The Malaysian government has rejected claims that it will give citizenship to the 3,000 Syrian refugees expected to arrive over the next two years under a United Nations (UN) plan.<\/p>\n
Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi confirmed to parliament Wednesday that Malaysia will only host the refugees until the situation in the war-torn country settles. <\/p>\n
“The placement of Syrian refugees will only be temporary and the government is steadfast in its position that they will [one day] have to return.”<\/p>\n
Zahid Hamidi said Malaysia will take in 1000 Syrian refugees every year from 2016 to 2018, with proper security surveillance on each individual. <\/p>\n
“In this matter, the government has no plans to receive the Syrian migrants as Malaysian citizens,” he said. <\/p>\n
In October last year, Prime Minister Najib Razak — addressing the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York — announced that Malaysia would open its doors to 3000 Syrian migrants over the next three years to help with the current Syrian refugee crisis.<\/p>\n
Five Syrian refugees families have already arrived in Malaysia to-date, all screened through the Advance Passenger Screening System with the cooperation of Interpol and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).<\/p>\n
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.<\/p>\n
Since then, more than 250,000 people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced, according to UN figures.<\/p>\n
Turkey, which has hosted 2.7 million Syrians since April 2011, shelters more refugees than any other country in the world, according to the UNHCR – the UN refugee agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Malaysian government has rejected claims that it will give citizenship to the 3,000 Syrian refugees expected to arrive over the next two years under a United Nations (UN) plan. Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi confirmed to parliament Wednesday that Malaysia will only host the refugees until the situation in the war-torn country settles. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":{"id":44467,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":648,"height":369,"file":"2016\/03\/zahid_Syrian-refugees_600.jpg","filesize":63979,"sizes":{},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":44466,"source_url":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/zahid_Syrian-refugees_600.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}