We often take our citizenship for granted. Yet Malaysian women suffer in the hands of their own birthplace’s archaic citizenship laws that discriminate based on gender.

This is the time to stand in solidarity with Malaysian women and their children, whose only wish is to be recognised as equal citizens before the law.

This is the fight that needs to be won.

Family Frontiers, in collaboration with Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM), is organising a Majlis Tahlil & Bacaan Yasin for Sabeena, a Malaysian mother who was part of Family Frontiers’ Network of Impacted Malaysian Mothers. The event will be held on 6 June 2022 (Monday), 5 PM at Tasik Aman Jaya, Petaling Jaya (opposite Amcorp Mall).

While the Government continues to resist women’s equal citizenship rights, Malaysian women are breathing their last breaths with their unfulfilled dreams of seeing their children being recognised as Malaysian citizens. Sabeena lived her whole life as a second-class citizen while her four adult children are yet to be recognised as Malaysian citizens.

Through this Majlis Tahlil, we hope to recognise her struggles and strength while she navigated Malaysia’s discriminatory citizenship laws throughout her life, and how much it mattered to her that her children were Malaysian citizens; that up until her last breath, she did not give up fighting for her children’s citizenship. 

Sabeena, in her response to one of Family Frontiers’ questionnaire, wrote about the challenges she had to face at various stages and aspects of her life, including: having to be separated from her children when they were forced to leave home as they were no longer able to remain in the country as adults, financial hardships the family faced and the humiliation she had to endure when authorities questioned her for marrying a foreigner during visa or citizenship application processes. 

This event is held in conjunction with the #SayaJugaAnakMalaysia campaign and its current campaign #ManaDokumenKami that urges the Government to respect and comply with the 9 September 2021 KL High Court decision in the Suriani Kempe case, which recognised overseas-born children of Malaysian women as citizens by ‘operation of law’ and ordered all relevant authorities to issue citizenship-related documents to impacted children.