Sarawak bars Ibrahim Ali, Ridhuan Tee in ‘immigration blacklist’

Sarawak will expand the list of Malaysians it wanted barred from entering the state, said Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem. "I am building a list of people I don't want to come to Sarawak," he told a gathering of Barisan Nasional national female leaders in Kuching on the so-called "immigration blacklist", which includes hardline religious personalities from the peninsula. Adenan last year used the state's autonomy on immigration to declare he would bar "extremists, religious bigots and troublemakers" from the state, after religious authorities in Selangor seized Bahasa and Iban language Bibles that contained the word Allah and the ensuing religious tensions fanned by right-wing Malay groups. Perkasa chief Datuk Ibrahim Ali is on the list and so too is the academic Dr Mohd Ridhuan Tee Abdullah. Opposition politicians such as PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar, the party's women chief and Ampang MP Zuraidah Kamaruddin, Datuk Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, Batu MP Tian Chua and vice-president Rafizi Ramli have all been barred from entering the state. "We are peaceful people. Let it stay that way. "That's why I don't want these people (extremists, religious bigots and trouble makers) from coming," he told the gathered in Kuching, held to finalise their election campaign strategy. Adenan said there was no use for Malaysians "to quarrel over these (race and religious) things". He said even decades after the first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman's death, his dream of a "happy Malaysia" would still not be realised. The dream, first shattered by the Chinese-Malay sectarian violence in Kuala Lumpur on May 13, 1969, was now further impeded by new religious extremists and racists, he added. It was for these reasons that he was drawing the list of unwanted Malaysians, he said, and the list went beyond opposition leaders from DAP and PKR. Adenan urged the moderates to stand up and take charge. "The silent majority must speak up and stop their country from being ruled by extremists," he said. – March 1, 2016.]]>