It is with utter shock that a Nigerian student pursuing his doctorate in management had suddenly died while being held in the Bukit Jalil Detention Centre on 9 July.
As everyone in Malaysia wait for the results of the autopsy, the incident of the passing of the student is rigged with more questions than answers.
Perhaps, the most glaring question is the time period taken by the Immigration Department to verify if indeed Thomas was a student with the Limkokwing University. Detained on the 4th of July, 5 days had passed before Thomas passed way – 5 days that could have been used to contact the university to determine and certify the validity of his travel documents.
The Immigration Department stated that he did not give full cooperation during the operation and tried to run when he was approached by the them. He then handed over his valid student card and passport which the Immigration officers suspected, could be false. This is a valid assumption and therefore confirmation must be made as soon as possible with the university. The million-dollar question here is why did the Immigration Department take 5 days to ascertain that Thomas was indeed a student in Limkokwing University and with a simple phone call, an email, or even a visit in person by the raiding officer could have confirmed that and would have facilitated in his release as he was further due to be remanded for 2 weeks to “to facilitate the process of verifying his documents as well as details of his college records”. Two weeks to do this? It is quite inconceivable especially if a university like Limkokwing would have these records in a digital format rather than vetting through thousands of files like in the olden days.
And if indeed the Immigration Department had contacted the university there is no doubt that they would have assisted in this case as seen in the sharing of Thomas’ information to the Nigerian embassy expeditiously after he has passed away.
Immigration Officers must be equipped with body cams during raids and operations to protect the integrity of every officer and the force and also to prevent wrongful allegations of misconduct by and against officers and at the same time to keep raiding footages on record for future reference or even to be produced in court.
While the Immigration Department claimed that there is no breach in SOP in the case of the detention of Thomas, perhaps a proper review of the SOP is needed now and that the time needed to validate and verify authenticity of documents especially in cases where students and employees are involved be shortened.
As a whole, prison reforms, including detention centre reforms appears to be more necessary than ever now as there have been over 100 deaths in 2 years, between 2015 to 2016 in Malaysian detention centres.