The Immigration Department has denied allegations of discriminating against Indian tourists who arrived at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2).
This came after a 1-minute video went viral on TikTok, showing Indian citizens given poor treatment at the airport, including being forced to sit on the floor and having to go through long entry processes despite having complete documents.
According to Bernama, Immigration director-general Datuk Seri Khairul Dzaimee Daud said the investigation found that the travellers did not go to the Immigration counter directly and were loitering in the arrival area for almost 3 hours.
He added that some were hiding in the toilets. This situation then raised suspicions of enforcement officers.
“Immigration will receive the initial flight manifest and we know that in a certain flight how many are foreigners. But when they did not approach the counter (Immigration) after two to three hours, our officers went to look and found them. They were taken to the operation room for investigation,” he said.
Khairul said after the Indian nationals were questioned, it was found that they came to Malaysia, not as tourists but were looking for employment illegally as they had no accommodation and did not have sufficient pocket money.
This is a clear violation of the social visit pass, he explained.
He added that all the travellers were returned to India and they were given Not-To-Land (NTL) notices besides being blacklisted from entering Malaysia after this.
Earlier, a video had been making rounds on social media with a woman claiming that Indian tourists visiting Malaysia were made to wait an “unnecessarily long time” to clear immigration even though they had valid travel documents.
She also claimed that tourists were made to sit on the floor and said this was an “act of disrespect”. The video was said to have been posted on Thursday.
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