PUTRAJAYA, Nov 26: The Court of Appeal here today upheld a High Court decision granting Malaysian citizenship to six stateless members of the same family spanning three generations.
A three-member bench comprising Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Datuk Azizah Nawawi, Court of Appeal judges Datuk Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali and Datuk Azhahari Kamal Ramli dismissed, without costs, the appeals brought by the Registrar of Births and Deaths, Registrar-General of Births and Deaths, Director-General of National Registration, Minister of Home Affairs and the Government of Malaysia.
Justice Mohd Nazlan, who delivered the court’s unanimous decision online, said K. Kamaladevi, her two children, and her three grandchildren had successfully established their case for citizenship by operation of law under Article 14 (1) (b) read with Section 1(a) of Part II of the second schedule of the Federal Constitution.
“Given the totality of the evidence, the respondents, on a balance of probabilities, proved that they fulfilled the third requirement of Section 1 (a) of Part II of the Second Schedule of the Federal Constitution that one of the parents is a Malaysian citizen,” he said.
He also said there is nothing in the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 that imposes any requirement that an identity card is a prerequisite to the registration of marriage or which prohibits the marriage of stateless persons.
Justice Mohd Nazlan also said the Court of Appeal found no appealable errors in the High Court’s judgment warranting appellate intervention.
In May last year, the High Court allowed the family’s lawsuit and declared that they were entitled to automatic Malaysian citizenship.
The High Court held that Kamaladevi and her daughter have the right to register their marriages under Malaysian laws. It ruled that stateless persons in Malaysia have the right to register their marriage under Malaysian laws even without having a Malaysian identity card.
Kamaladevi’s story dated back to her grandparents, who were both born in Malaya before the formation of Malaysia in 1963. The couple had two children, K. Vathumalai and K. Letchimee, through a customary marriage.
Letchimee had encountered problems with her official documents after her stepfather pawned her birth certificate when she was a child, and it was only recovered later by her brother.
Letchimee later entered into a customary marriage with a Malaysian man and had three children, including Kamaladevi. She could not register her marriage with the National Registration Department (NRD) as she did not possess an identity card then.
Kamaladevi claimed her mother should have received a Malaysian identity card, but did not collect it from the NRD before she died.
Kamaladevi said she too could not register her marriage to a Malaysian man as she did not have an identity card, resulting in her children born in Malaysia and her three grandchildren also becoming stateless.
At today’s proceedings, senior federal counsel Norazlinawati Mohd Arshad appeared for the Registrar of Births and Deaths, Registrar-General of Births and Deaths, Director-General of National Registration, Minister of Home Affairs and the government of Malaysia, while lawyers New Sin Yew and Shugan Raman appeared for the family members.
Sin Yew told reporters that the Court of Appeal’s decision affirmed that stateless persons have the right to marry under the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 and that the absence of an identification card, which stateless persons would not have, is not a bar to marriage.
— BERNAMA