By DayakDaily Team
KUCHING, March 4: KUALA LUMPUR, March 4: After 33 years of living without citizenship, a Sarawakian man of Kenyah descent has finally received his MyKad, marking the end of a decades-long struggle for legal recognition.
Soliman Wan, 52, who was born in Long Banga, Miri, had been holding a temporary resident or green identity card since the age of 12 due to his parents’ unclear citizenship status and lack of documentation.
When he collected his MyKad from the National Registration Department (NRD) in Putrajaya on Jan 29, the moment felt surreal.
“When I went to NRD recently and read the letter, I read it five times like someone who couldn’t read because it felt like a dream. Before this, I thought I would die stateless because I had lost hope,” he told Bernama at a church in Petaling Jaya, as reported by TVS today.
A pastor for the past 25 years, Soliman said his parents never had proper documents as they lived in remote areas with limited access to transportation and were unaware of the importance of identification at the time.
He described the approval of his citizenship as nothing short of a miracle, expressing gratitude to the Minister of Home Affairs, Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, for reviewing his long-pending application. Soliman first applied to JPN in 1993 and later to the Home Affairs Ministry (KDN) in 1998.
Living without citizenship brought numerous challenges, including travel restrictions outside Sarawak, difficulties opening bank accounts, renewing his driving licence, and accessing his Employees Provident Fund (EPF) savings.
Despite these hardships, he remains thankful to Sarawak Immigration for issuing a support letter that enabled him to pursue a degree in biochemistry at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in 1994.
Now officially recognised as a Malaysian citizen, Soliman hopes to assist other stateless individuals, particularly among Sarawak’s indigenous communities such as the Iban and Kenyah, in obtaining proper identification documents.
“The closest to me are my own family. Three of my siblings are still stateless, and my 72-year-old mother only received her delayed birth registration certificate three months ago,” he said. — DayakDaily
