instance of loss of documents is 77-year-old S. Thangam who lost both her parents and her birth certificate, whose citizenship application was rejected with no reasons given (Malaysia Nanban, 2017, March 7). In the case of Aliammah, who was born in a rubber estate hospital during the communist insurgency in Malaya, she was unable to register her birth as her home was set on fire. She is unable to find witnesses to attest to her birth to support her citizenship as the midwife cannot be located. (Predeep Nambiar, 2021, December 13). Another example of how a person can become stateless is when they were born at home and did not obtain birth registration documents, as in the case of Lakshmi who is a stateless red IC holder who has lived in Perak her entire life (UNHCR Malaysia, 2018). Many senior citizens from the Siamese communities in Kelantan, Kedah, Perlis, and Perak who were born before independence and hold permanent resident cards are still unable to access Malaysian citizenship. Senator Aknan Ehtook explains that the issue remains invisible as the welfare and communal issues of the Siamese community in Malaysia are not getting enough attention from the government (Rohana, 2019). Another stateless case is of a person of Chinese descent, 57-year-old Chen Shunhao, who was born in Johor and holds a red IC or permanent resident status, and has been waiting for his Malaysian citizenship for 45 years. With only primary education up until Standard Four, he failed his Bahasa Malaysia test three times, which is an obligatory requirement of his citizenship application (New, 2017). 2.1.2 Scale of issue There has been no official data released by the government on the number of stateless persons with long-standing residence since pre-independence. We can only estimate the number of this population based on NGO-collected data on stateless persons and figures based on the number of permanent resident status holders. A mapping and registration campaign by DHRRA (Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas), an NGO working on eradicating statelessness amongst Malaysian Indians, identified at least 12,392 stateless Indians in Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Perak, and Kedah, between 2014 and 2017. 31