Hold, whip and return

Just as Australia starts taking a softer approach to its detention centres, a news story from the Jakarta Post says that Malaysia has this year taken to flogging illegal immigrants, and has no plans on changing this policy any time soon:

"KUALA LUMPUR (AP): Despite increasingly congested detention centers, Malaysia will not deport illegal immigrants immediately, but will stick with its policy of sending them to trial and sentencing them to the lash, the home minister was quoted as saying on Sunday.

"If they are charged and then punished with whipping, they would think many times before running the risk of re-entering the country," Home Minister Azmi Khalid was quoted as saying by the national news agency Bernama.

More than 9,000 illegals, mostly Indonesians, are being held at the centers throughout the country as they await their trials to start or be completed, according to Azmi.

"This is due to delays in the legal process," Azmi was quoted as saying by the Berita Minggu newspaper. "The cases drag on (sometimes for more than a year) due to many postponements, whereas illegal immigrants are caught almost every day."

Azmi said congestion in detention centers will worsen as the government steps up the operation to round up illegals by empowering civilian volunteers - besides police and immigration officers - to detain them.

Whipping was introduced as a punishment for illegal immigrants as part of a crackdown launched in March 2005."

I had not heard of this in the Australian media, but maybe I missed it.

Puts our treatment of such people in some sort of perspective, doesn't it.