Dr Graham Thom blogs from the field in Malaysia, where he is visiting refugee and migrant worker communities and supporting the launch of Amnesty International's report on conditions for migrant workers in Malaysia.

I've spent the last seven days in Malaysia talking to refugees and migrants prior to the release of our report, "Trapped - the exploitation of migrant workers in Malaysia".

Download the report now (pdf 954kb)

In the past few days I've visited a number of the communities we met here in July last year and caught up on their situations. Unfortunately little has changed. While the government has made a number of important announcements - including that it will provide refugees with formal identity documents - many are still being exploited, often doing dangerous jobs. Refugees are still being rounded up in raids and placed in detention.

In a country with over 2 million legal migrant workers and an estimated equal number of undocumented migrant workers, it's always interesting to follow public debate on the issue in the local news.

Reading the local newspaper in another non-descript hotel breakfast area, the same articles we saw last year are still appearing. On the one hand the government is signalling that they are about to launch another major crackdown on "illegal foreign workers", while on the next page employer groups are begging the government to increase the number of work permits because there is a shortage of labour.

To fill labour gaps the government has recently proposed allowing recognised refugees limited work rights. This would be an important step. At present, refugees recognised by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) do not have any legal status in Malaysia as it has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention. Anyone found without a valid visa can be arrested, charged and sent to prison. After prison they end up in detention centres, often for months. Those found guilty of immigration offences can also be whipped.

A UNHCR card however is supposed to stop the police, RELA (the local volunteer law enforcement group) and other officials from arresting and detaining you.

"I spent the afternoon with a mother whose 15 year old son went out one afternoon and never returned. Two days later she was informed he was in a detention centre near the Thai border. That was twelve months ago."

Refugees reported to me that they are still being detained. I spent the afternoon with a mother whose 15 year old son went out one afternoon and never returned. Two days later she was informed he was in a detention centre near the Thai border. That was twelve months ago. She has been able to visit him three times but because she cannot work the cost to travel and visit him is exorbitant, especially when she has her other children to feed.

What a choice for a mother to make - to provide for her remaining children or visit her son detained in an over crowded detention centre.

UNHCR has been allowed back in to the centres in the last twelve months and has been able to arrange for some refugees to be released. But as in the case of the 15 year old boy, they have not been able to reach everyone and it can often take many months even if UNHCR intervenes.

Those detained remained in a very vulnerable situation. I constantly heard reports about the appalling health conditions in the detention centres. We were able to witness these conditions first hand during our visit last year and shortly after we left we received reports of a number of detainees who had died from a disease, leptospirosis, commonly spread by the urine of rats. People are still contracting and dying of this disease in Malaysian detention centres today.

"...shortly after we left [in July 2009] we received reports of a number of detainees who had died from a disease, leptospirosis, commonly spread by the urine of rats. People are still contracting and dying of this disease in Malaysian detention centres today."

One practice that the Malaysian authorities have appeared to have ended is that of corrupt immigration officials selling people they were supposed to be removing (in reality dumping across the Thai border) to traffickers and smugglers. Women and men who could pay the smugglers were returned to Malaysia - those who could not were sold into the sex trade in Thailand, or to work as slave labour on fishing boats. A woman I interviewed today recounted how she saw women who could not pay being dragged away to another hut. Later she heard them screaming over and over again for help.

While the authorities have cracked down on this practice, our report highlights a number of other areas of serious concern where corruption and abuse are still occurring. For a modern country like Malaysia this is unacceptable.

It's vital the Malaysian government takes action to protect the rights of all those in its territory - refugees and migrants alike.